The Great British Countryside (2012) s01e04 Episode Script
Highlands
The great British countryside - beautiful, glorious.
And very, very old.
For three billion years, these British Isles have been growing and changing.
They've never stood still.
If you love the British landscape the way we both do, then you might be very familiar with it, but there is another story to be told.
The story that's always fascinated me, of what happened here those millions of years ago.
And how that still affects our lives every day.
Hey, look out! They could cause some damage.
For a country of our size, we have a greater variety of landscapes than anywhere else on earth.
It's all down to our dramatic history.
Over millions of years, we've been flooded, frozen and ravaged by mighty earth movements.
What's even more astonishing is how that distant past still shapes the countryside today.
I'm alive! We're going to all four corners of the country to discover how Britain's epic past lives on in the most surprising ways.
I'm ready for adventuring, but you're the geology buff.
Where to first? - I want to go everywhere.
- Of course you do.
I'm a boy! - Can I come with you? - Yeah.
- Where are you going? - Is this a footpath? If there's a part of Britain that says rugged and remote, it's the Highlands of Scotland.
Look at that! It's Britain's last wilderness, where whatever you get up to feels a little bit adventurous.
Ha-ha! It's the oldest part of Britain and one of the oldest places in the world.
Fantastic landscape.
Almost as old as I feel.
Of all the different parts of the UK, it's the Highlands that draw me back time and again, but there are a few surprises around here.
Whoa! And it's not a place to take for granted.
The cold has really taken hold of me now.
The wild landscape of the Highlands has shaped life here in the unlikeliest ways.
I think I might stick to trousers.
And it's all here thanks to a violent past.
This is a landscape made by fire and ice and massive upheaval.
Its past is written all over its face.
We're going to unravel the story of how the Highlands got to be so wild and, well, high.
I think the Highlands is fantastic in absolutely every kind of weather.
I can just feel that lovely drizzle on my face.
Which I don't normally like, but here I'm very, very happy because it's just so beautiful.
It's beautiful and it's empty, and I imagine it's very, very hard to get a pizza.
- We could try, though.
I've got a mobile.
- You'd get a quid off it.
There's no way they're gonna deliver it in 20 minutes.
You'd need a hell of a moped! This is the most extreme landscape in the country: 15,000 square miles of ruggedness, with Britain's highest mountains, deepest lakes and wildest weather.
It's no place for the faint-hearted, and just the place for Britain's most extreme cycle challenge.
Every year hundreds of cyclists tackle Bealach Na Ba, the high mountain pass that leads to a remote place called Applecross in the northwest Highlands.
It's the longest, steepest mountain road in the country: Six lung-bursting miles from sea level to summit.
It's a monster! Tough.
Start slowly and finish slower.
Now I am going to have a go at it myself, partly because I really love cycling, partly because I've been told I have to, but mostly because at the top you get a glimpse into Britain's past.
Bealach Na Ba.
Applecross.
Probably a delightful place to go.
Unfortunately, to get there, I'm gonna have to cycle to a height of 2,053 feet.
Gradients of 1 in 5.
And hairpin bends.
The road to Applecross takes you through some of the wildest and most spectacular scenery in the country.
Perfect for taking your mind off the pain of climbing it.
But it also takes you back in time, back to before Britain was born.
It's hard to imagine, but once this land wasn't even joined to what we now think of as Britain, and it would have been much flatter and much easier to cycle.
I wonder if I can get a leg transplant? Because what is now incredibly tough terrain is also incredibly old.
In fact, this remote corner of the Highlands is one of the oldest places on planet earth.
Fantastic landscape.
It's ancient.
It's almost as old as I feel at this moment.
Is this the top? Wooh.
Look at that.
That is almost worth it.
But it's not just the spectacular view I've come up for.
I'm after something else just as impressive.
There's really nowhere else like this in Britain.
And that's not surprising, because this landscape was formed way before the rest of Britain even existed.
This sandstone is a billion years old.
And not even this at that age comes anywhere near winning The Oldest Rock Competition in this area.
Because this beautiful stripy rock, which is called gneiss, was cooked and crushed about three billion years ago.
"What's on telly tonight?" "When's the weekend?" Or "Who's coming at Christmas?" That is an unimaginable length of time.
This was part of the original earth's crust.
Fortunately, it has cooled down a bit since then.
For me this place is really the essence of the Highlands: Craggy, remote and unimaginably old.
It all looks so beautiful now, so permanent but these mountains haven't always been here.
There's nowhere in Britain like the Highlands.
And it doesn't just look different, it feels different.
When you go back in time you understand why.
This is a place with a massive, dramatic story.
It's pretty mind-boggling.
There was a time when the whole of Britain was just a broken jigsaw of scattered bits of land.
450 million years ago the world looked nothing like it does now.
Scotland was on the other side of the globe, part of a massive continent that also contained North America.
To the south was a chain of islands that contained England and Wales.
Over time these two land masses crunched into each other.
This collision created the Scottish Highlands, part of a huge new mountain range.
These peaks ran for thousands of miles and were as high as the Himalayas.
The Scottish Highlands we're so familiar with now are just a remnant of those ancient mountains.
After 400 million years of erosion the landscape has changed enormously.
But you can still see what this powerful collision created.
Especially from the air.
Ace pilot, David West, has taken off from here on Loch Lomond hundreds of times.
That's us on our way.
Whoo! Whoa! Which is just as well because I've managed to choose one of the wildest days of the year to fly on.
This is getting very hairy.
- Let's go and find some smooth air, guys.
- Let's.
I think this will be worth the pain.
God, look at that! That's stunning! Definitely worth it.
The continental pile-up didn't just make mountains, it also created huge cracks in the rocks, called fault lines.
And one of these massive cracks runs right across Loch Lomond.
It's called the Highland Boundary Fault.
From the air you can make out where the crack happened, from that line of rocks, which were once deep inside the fault itself.
Now they're just remains, forming a dotted line of islands that run straight across the water.
They mark out just one stretch of an enormous fault line that slices for nearly 200 miles from one side of Scotland to the other.
The Highland Boundary Fault Line marks the edge of the Highlands.
To the south is flat land, to the north mountains.
This is where the Highlands begin.
The Highland Boundary Fault Line is one of the most dramatic features in the British landscape.
It's basically this huge fracture line which is the result of a continental pile-up when Scotland smashed into England and Wales.
Hundreds of millions of years later people that live along the fault line are still feeling the aftershocks.
I think I'm still feeling some myself now as well.
Or is it just turbulence? It might not look it, but the Highland landscape has been rocked to the core.
In some places its shaky history lives on all these millions of years later.
This little town of Comrie sits halfway along the Highland Boundary Fault.
The land around the fault is still on the move, and when it does move the town trembles.
Over the centuries Comrie has had so many shocks and tremors - that locals know it by another name.
- Shaky Toon.
Shaky Toon! Shaky Toon! In October 1839 a large earthquake hit Comrie.
As the ground shook the locals panicked and crowded into the church to pray.
This was only the beginning.
For the next seven years Comrie was afflicted by an almost Biblical plague of earthquakes.
On some days there were dozens of tremors.
It's quite strange to think about that happening in Britain.
It must have been petrifying.
For scientists these quakes were fascinating.
In this remote Highland village early geologists saw a chance to improve their understanding of earthquakes.
On the edge of Comrie is a small building and inside there is some very odd-looking equipment.
Earthquake expert, Roger Musson, has studied the remarkable history of this place.
What have we got here, Roger? What is this little building? This is, effectively, the world's very first purpose-built earthquake observatory, constructed in late 1874, early 1875, to try and record the earthquakes that were affecting Comrie.
I don't want to be rude, but it looks like something you could hang your coat on.
It does a bit, yes.
All it is is a set of little wooden pegs balanced on their ends, and if the earthquake comes along, then some of those pegs will fall over in the shaking.
If it's a small earthquake, then only the smallest pegs will fall over.
If it's a big earthquake, all the pegs will fall over.
Very simple.
It was actually crude even in the 1870s.
And does it work? Did it work? The earthquakes which they were expecting to ramp up, as they did in the late 1830s, 1840s, didn't.
They just died away after these initial shocks.
So the pegs have never fallen down in the history of the building.
Well, we thought it was a shame that this scientific sleeping beauty has never been awakened, so we're going to create our own mini-earthquake using gunpowder.
Victorian scientists experimented with gunpowder to find out how shock waves travelled through the ground.
We're using 100 grams of explosives to create our own tremor.
Ear protectors on.
But will it be enough to trigger this 19th-century seismometer? I just hope we don't knock the little house down.
Three, two, one, go.
Ooh! Cor! I could feel that.
I felt a little jolt.
Very good.
Well, let's go and see whether there was a jolt experienced up on the hill.
Nothing.
OK.
We'll have to try more explosive, I think.
This time we're hoping half a kilo of gunpowder will pack enough punch.
Three, two, one, go.
Whoa! I definitely felt that.
- It really was like a shell blast.
- Definite movement there.
- Well, shall we go and check? - Let's go and see.
Let's go check.
Any luck this time? Nothing.
I've always said that thing's insensitive and there's the proof today.
Half a kilo of explosives wasn't enough to make Earthquake House shake.
In fact, it's thought that the original tremors that rocked Comrie were equivalent to 200 tons of gunpowder going off.
And they could still happen again.
The Highlands look so peaceful now, you really wouldn't think of this landscape being rocked by earth movements that have shifted Scotland this way and that.
But as well as the Highland Boundary Fault, further north is another great tear.
It's called the Great Glen Fault, and when you see it on a map, it looks as if the top of Scotland was ripped off, and reattached with a zip.
You do so love a map, don't you? I do love a map.
Yeah.
- Why? - Because if you have a satnav or something you can never really tell where you are.
It's like driving in a tunnel, isn't it? But if you have a map, you can see the big picture.
And this is the big picture of Scotland.
And about 430 million years ago Scotland didn't look like that.
So you're tearing through Loch Ness there.
Loch Ness, down the Great Glen.
Scotland looked like that.
And then it shifted.
It moved north up the line of the Great Glen, which is a tear fault, and it went a bit beyond where it is now.
And then 350 million years ago it went back again.
It's like Strictly Come Dancing, this map! It went about 75 miles that way and about 4 miles that way until eventually we end up with what we think of as Scotland.
And whose fault is that? That is appalling.
And this is what that massive rip looks like for real.
This is the Great Glen, and this great fault line one side of the Highlands to the other.
It can rightfully claim to be the longest, deepest crack in Britain.
All along its path, the Great Glen is flooded by a chain of big lakes.
The biggest and the deepest is, of course, Loch Ness.
Plenty of people have come here in search of monsters.
But some have come in search of something else.
Speed.
Ha-ha! Everything about this vast loch is shaped by the fact that it sits in a fault line.
Loch Ness is 23 miles long and it's absolutely dead straight.
It's the perfect race track.
Ha ha ha! Whoo! Speed fans and adventurers have been drawn here for decades.
The most daring of them all was a British racing driver called John Cobb.
John Cobb was the fastest man on earth.
Back in 1947 he smashed the land speed record in the Utah desert.
Five years later Cobb came here to Loch Ness to try and become the fastest man on water.
One local, then a boy, saw it all happen: Gordon Menzies.
Gordon, you were 13 years old when John Cobb came here with Crusader, his jet boat.
That's right.
Middle of August, 1952.
And I actually have a picture here.
That's John Cobb himself.
This is Crusader.
- And that's me.
- That's you! - Why were you here? - My father owned the place.
It was kept in one of my father's sheds.
We were on holiday from school, so this is where we spent every waking hour, watching what was going on.
- It's proper Boy's Own stuff, isn't it? - It was incredible.
I would have absolutely loved someone to turn up with a jet-engine powered boat at my house.
So did we.
So did we.
Gordon is taking me out on Loch Ness to retrace the route John Cobb took 60 years ago.
We're joined by a man who's devoted his career to unravelling the mysteries of Loch Ness - Adrian Shine.
So we're not far now, are we, from where John made his run? Why did he choose Loch Ness in the first place? Well, Loch Ness is a very long, straight body of water, which you wanted if you were going to go over 200 miles an hour.
But it was a trap.
Because unfortunately, although this fault is long and straight, and very regular, it is aligned precisely with our prevailing southwest wind.
It's like a wind tunnel.
So he had very few opportunities to test the boat, to run it up to speed.
Thanks to the alignment of the loch, what Cobb thought of as the perfect racetrack, was too windy for him to test the boat properly.
Undeterred and under pressure to make the run, on 29th September 1952, Cobb decided to go for the record, anyway.
He managed to clock a speed of over 200mph, faster than anyone on water before.
But, powering back down the loch he hit a single wave, which punctured an undiscovered weak spot in the hull.
In a few horrifying seconds the Crusader broke up and Cobb was killed.
Around Loch Ness Cobb is remembered as a great British hero.
He was a big, quiet gentleman.
He would always speak to you.
There were no airs and graces about the man.
He obviously just loved to go fast.
The Great Glen forms a kind of natural highway that cuts through the Highlands from coast to coast.
250 years ago, the benefit of that natural highway was obvious to the British Army.
This is Fort George.
A massive military base guarding the narrow entrance to the Great Glen.
And it was built during a dark time in Scotland's history.
In 1745 Bonnie Prince Charlie and his Highland supporters attempted to overthrow the British Crown.
The rebellion failed but the British military decided not to chance any repeats.
And that's why they built Fort George.
It was military engineering on a colossal, landscape-changing scale.
This wasn't just defence, this was intimidation.
This is the place they chose, because if you control the entrance to the Great Glen, you control the only easy way through the rugged Highland landscape.
But conditions for the troops stationed in this cold, exposed place could be brutal.
There are stories on men on sentry duty being found frozen to death at their posts.
No wonder the soldiers called this place Fort Misery.
Company shun! In the 18th century the garrison at Fort George was drawn from all over Britain.
Army life hasn't changed much, but nowadays the men on parade are from all over the world.
Shun! So where's everybody from? Tell me where you're from.
- I'm from Malawi.
- From Malawi.
- Nairobi, Kenya.
- From Fiji.
- Northampton.
- Northampton.
- I'm from Malawi.
- Malawi as well.
So, from all over the world.
How long have you been here? - Three weeks now.
- Three weeks? Yes.
- How are you adapting to the weather here? - It's a bit hard.
It's windy, freezing.
You're from Nairobi.
You've been here how long? Six weeks now.
What was your first impression of Fort George when you saw it? It's not a modern type of a camp, but it's a good place to be.
If you talk of history, I think it's a good place for history.
- Very much so.
- But very cold.
- Very cold.
- Very cold.
Thanks, guys.
I'll buy you all thermal underwear and post it to you! Fort George is all about location, location, location, and the military have cleverly exploited land and sea.
But they aren't the only ones to understand the strategic importance of this place.
The waters around Fort George are home to a very special pod of bottlenose dolphins.
They can be found here pretty much every day, which is unusual for this species.
The reason they're able to live here all year round is because they've cottoned on to one of the benefits of the local geology - a never-ending supply of fine Scottish fish.
For 20 years Charlie Phillips has watched and photographed the dolphins here, opposite Fort George.
Hi, Charlie.
- Hi, Julia.
How are you? - So this is how you spend your days? Yeah.
It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it.
Now, why are you almost always - and I say that with a slight hint of caution - almost always guaranteed dolphin in this locality? The geology that we have here is really why the dolphins are here.
They come to this specific area because the tide comes past the tip of this peninsula very rapidly.
And the dolphins sit at one end of you could almost call it a supermarket conveyor belt.
And there's fish coming along this conveyor belt.
It's like The Generation Game for dolphins.
They can take their pick.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Their favourite food is salmon and that's something the Highland landscape provides in abundance.
The ancient glens that run down to this stretch of coastline contain some of Britain's richest salmon rivers.
Every year, as the salmon head up the Great Glen to spawn, they're funnelled through a deep, narrow channel right by Fort George.
It's the perfect place for dolphins to stage an ambush.
And the perfect place for people to spot dolphins.
I know of no other place on planet earth like this.
This is completely unique, where the people that you can see standing at the very edge of the beach could quite easily have a dolphin ten feet from them, and they're standing on dry land.
That's pretty amazing.
Unfortunately, it's typical Highland weather today and the choppy water makes it tricky to spot anything among the waves.
But suddenly Ooh, there we go.
There we go.
There we go, yeah.
A couple of dorsal fins.
Ooh-hoo-hoo.
Yes! Despite the bad weather, I did manage to see a dolphin.
Well, a bit of a dolphin.
A little bit of a dolphin.
We've seen how the collision of ancient continents created the mountains of Scotland and some of its greatest natural features.
Now we're going to discover how the violent geology of the past also lies behind some of Scotland's most familiar culture.
Where are Trinny and Susannah when you need them? How dangerous extinct volcanoes created the need for mountain rescue services on the island of Skye.
Go find! Go find! How plants from the bogs of the Highlands helped flavour Scotland's favourite export.
It kind of makes your eyes water slightly.
We'll get a glimpse into life in Scotland during the ice ages.
- These are reindeer? - They are reindeer.
They are real reindeer.
We are here.
And find out how that most familiar feature of the Highlands powered us to victory in the war.
It's wet here in Lochaber.
It's really wet.
The dramatic landscape of Skye makes it one of the most popular tourist destinations in the whole of the Highlands and islands.
But what most visitors don't know is that humans aren't the first to walk across this landscape.
I'm hoping to track down traces of the island's surprising past.
Dugald Ross and his daughter Catriona know exactly where to look.
All will be revealed with a sweep of a broom! - Hi, Dugald.
- Hi, Hugh.
Nice to see you.
Hi, Catriona.
So, what's this? What we see there is the imprint of a species of dinosaur called Meglasaurus.
Oh, wow, look at that.
It's a three-pronged dinosaur footprint.
That's huge.
And this is the actual surface that the dinosaur would have left the print in.
Yes, that's in situ.
As opposed to others which are found in loose rocks.
- Wow.
So a rippled beach.
- Yes.
Ripples similar to what we find on the local beach.
Like a dinosaur walking in wet concrete.
You'd be very cross with that.
If you were a workman, you'd be very cross with that.
Wouldn't you? And how big would that be? Well, to use the broom and the shovel If I point them in opposite directions that would be about there.
- So that's the tail to there, top of the head.
- So that's Wow.
That's quite frightening.
Would you find it frightening, if you met a dinosaur that size? Yeah, it would be really scary.
It's amazing that a dinosaur footprint could survive pretty much untouched on a British beach for 170 million years.
I'd be pushed to survive more than about 15 minutes.
Dugald has mentioned that he's found one or two more fossils.
Turns out he was being characteristically modest.
There are hundreds of them.
Wow, you've got a whole collection of dinosaur footprints.
Quite a few in here, yes.
- Have you collected all these yourself? - Most of them.
Starting at a very early age? I think I was an unusual teenager.
I first started when I was about 15.
- Where did you keep them? - Under the bed.
Under the bed.
Fantastic.
I love this one over here.
- Which is enormous, isn't it? - Yes, yes.
That particular one is quite important, scientifically.
That is the first recorded dinosaur footprint from Scotland.
Dugald's schoolboy craze has ended up in an absolutely astonishing collection of fossils.
And what is most intriguing is that they're a clue to another piece of ancient history: Scotland and North America were once joined together.
So, do you like these fossils, Catriona? Which is your favourite of them? I like this one because there's the baby dinosaur footprints and then there's the adult dinosaur footprints.
- Are these the baby dinosaur footprints? - Yeah.
This is a great thing.
- And this is from Skye? - Indeed, yes.
But identical ones have been found in Wyoming.
Wyoming? It makes sense because Skye and North America were part of the same land mass during the middle Jurassic Period.
- So the Atlantic wasn't there at all.
- No, no.
After this footprint was laid down It's rather like this slab, isn't it? That the Atlantic opened up, separating the two land masses.
So if that's Skye, and this is North America, it just sort of This became the Atlantic and it just spread the two places further and further apart.
Yeah.
You'd be a bit annoyed if you were a dinosaur and you had a mate on the other side of it.
I can imagine, yeah.
So, a few dinosaur footprints on a beach in Skye point to another violent instalment in the Highlands' past.
A mere 170 million years ago Scotland broke off from North America, as the Atlantic Ocean welled up between them.
As the earth's crust cracked open molten magma poured out.
It created a chain of mile-high volcanoes that towered over the west coast of Scotland.
The remains of these volcanoes still dominate the landscape today.
These are the Cuillin Mountains in the south of the island of Skye.
They're all that remain of those volcanoes, but they still form one of the most dramatic landscapes in Europe.
These ridges rise to over 3,000 feet, great peaks made of razor-sharp rock with uncompromising names, gabbro and basalt, that once formed deep in the heart of a volcano.
The Cuillins are a Mecca for mountaineers, but the sheer rock faces are a tough climb and accidents happen pretty frequently.
Out here you need to have someone you can depend on if you get into trouble.
This is Cuillin.
She's a five-year-old border collie, and she knows these mountains like the back of her paw.
She and her handler, Tony, just there, are part of a search and rescue team.
So, if you get into trouble, these guys might well save your bacon.
I should really say "haggis" when I'm here, shouldn't I? - OK, Julia, are you ready? - Yeah.
Indeed.
There you go.
Pass the leash.
Cuillin has been fully qualified for two years, but she and Tony never stop training.
The aim of today's exercise is to see if Cuillin can find Jonah who's lying injured somewhere in the volcanic landscape.
- OK, Julia.
This is where we're going to set up.
- OK.
So we're going to send Jonah out there.
In the nicest possible way, Jonah, go and get lost! OK.
And then once you harness her up she knows that it's work mode, yeah? When she sees that harness ready to go on, she knows she's going to work.
What makes these mountains so treacherous, apart from the terrible weather, the changeable weather? Well, we've got two types of rock here, mainly gabbro and basalt.
And erm the gabbro's good.
You know, it's really good sound rock.
But the problem is with the basalt rock it gets brittle, and we get quite a lot of people having accidents because they're pulling on it and it just comes away.
So you've got one really good solid rock that climbers love and then another crumbly Basalt.
It's very crumbly and it's very slippy as well.
Cuillin is a border collie, a dog that's just right for treacherous terrain like this.
Her speed and stamina means that she can cover miles of broken, rocky terrain faster than any human.
And that can make all the difference for an injured climber.
OK.
You ready? You ready? Go find! Go find! There she goes.
They work together and you'll see that she keeps coming back to Tony.
And that's partly to make sure that he's safe as well.
And the bell.
You know what the little bell's for.
Boy, wouldn't that be a welcome sound if you were stuck somewhere out here? We've been chatting for five, ten minutes, and the cold has really taken hold of me now.
I would not like to be stuck with a broken leg or a twisted ankle somewhere out here.
You wouldn't survive for very long.
This may be a training exercise today, but in reality this is life or death stuff.
Last year Cuillin and Tony were really put to the test.
Six climbers had become stuck in a snowstorm high in the mountains.
It was completely dark, and there was a blizzard blowing, but Cuillin managed to find the group and all of them made it out safely.
There we go.
She's heading back to Tony now, to lead him to where she thinks the body might be.
I don't know about Cuillin, but Tony's a fit bloke.
That's Jonah, isn't it? What have you got there? Show me.
Show me.
What have you got? Show me.
What have you got? Yes, it is.
Yeah.
Good girl! Good girl! Yes.
Job done.
Good girl! Yeah.
Good girl.
As a kid I holidayed in the Highlands.
"Don't worry.
It'll clear up soon.
" And that was right, because this far north and this far up the weather can change in an instant.
So the people who live here all year round have always had to be prepared.
If you were to ask me what clothes you should bring with you to the Scottish Highlands, I would say waterproof jacket, waterproof trousers, waterproof shoes, shorts, T-shirts and a pair of flip-flops.
Because it can be incredibly changeable here - beautiful one minute, ridiculously harsh the next.
Of course, in the past, most Highlanders would have lived several centuries from the nearest cagoule, so they were forced to develop a style of clothing uniquely suited to these conditions.
Its modern manifestation is this, the kilt.
You wear it a bit lower, obviously.
This, though, is the culmination of generations of Highlands style.
Probably about there is best.
What Paraig MacNeil doesn't know about traditional Highland clothing isn't worth knowing.
He looks like the man to tell me how this challenging landscape has influenced these clothes.
This, I should point out, is not his house.
But we're going for the full traditional experience, smoke and all.
Paraig, you look fantastic.
What are you wearing? I'm wearing the The old highland dress.
The belted plaid.
This is one piece of cloth.
It serves as your kilt, your cloak, your tent, your sleeping bag.
It's nature gift to mountain people.
That's fantastic.
It's almost like the Swiss Army Knife of clothing.
And what about the colours, then? These are traditional.
This one for example, it's my own design.
This is "the heather of the summer".
So you have your purples, your greens and your browns.
Essentially, you are camouflaged in the landscape.
It's a camouflage.
The early tartans were exactly that.
What we call This is a lot less garish than you'd expect from a normal tartan.
The early dyes that were used for the production of tartan I've got some of them here wrapped up in this wee handkerchief.
This is heather.
The tops of this could be used for greens.
The roots could be used for making yellows.
Here we have some very small lichen colours.
Very nice.
These would be used for making yellows.
This is bark of tree.
You can make black from that, or variant shades of brown.
So it was all natural colours taken from the land? It's the mirror of the landscape, that's what it is.
This is the landscape, this is the heart, this is the soul of the people in fabric.
The plaid might be an incredibly practical garment to wear Not too tight.
Probably about here, I would say.
but it's not exactly just something you slip into.
There we go.
So, if you can stand up very carefully.
I'll show you what to do.
Put that round your shoulder.
Let's have a wee look.
- Where's your kneecaps? - Where are my kneecaps? - Yeah.
- Well, they're on my legs.
They're here.
Ah, good.
I'm glad they're still there.
OK, good.
Excellent.
That's pretty good, actually.
- Do you want to tighten the belt yourself now? - Yeah.
I'd very much like to tighten it myself.
Good.
Do you know, I think I might stick to trousers.
Next thing is the waistcoat.
- There's more? - There's more.
If you would Oh, I like that.
It's a bit Keith Richards, this, isn't it? And this is an overcoat.
- There we are.
- I've got a sense of freedom wearing this.
Yes.
- But also, if I'm honest, my legs are quite cold.
- Uh-huh.
Where are Trinny and Susannah when you need them? Eh? The Scottish Highlands are unique.
History, culture, wildlife, everything about this dramatic place is shaped by a landscape that took three billion years to make.
It began with ancient rocks cooked and crushed long before the rest of Britain had even been born.
The mountains were built by a gigantic collision.
And then Scotland itself was ripped from North America in a series of fiery eruptions.
And if that wasn't enough, there was another massive, landscape-changing event.
Two-and-a-half million years ago Britain went into deep freeze.
The Scottish mountains were blanketed by ice sheets.
Glaciers gouged out deep glens and carved high narrow ridges.
It was the ice ages that created the Highlands as we know it today - barren and beautiful.
But this is also a landscape which has proved very useful to us in rather unexpected ways.
Because these hills and these valleys, created by the ice that froze Britain, also helped us win the Battle of Britain.
In the summer of 1940 Britain was fighting for its life.
A few hundred Hurricanes and Spitfires were all that stood between us and defeat.
And we were losing those aircraft at a terrifying rate.
To replace them we needed one thing above all.
Aluminium.
We think of aluminium now as a fairly ordinary, everyday material, but it's not so long ago, that because it was so expensive to make, this was regarded as a precious metal.
Fortunately, by the war they had cracked the process and it became cheaper.
Because the lightness and the strength of aluminium made it perfect for aircraft components.
There's just one problem with its manufacture, though.
And that is that it takes electricity.
Lots and lots and lots of electricity.
Which is why the ice ages were so important.
The glaciers carved a landscape of high narrow valleys that was perfectly shaped to trap and store water.
As the ice ages came to an end the climate here didn't just become warmer, it became wetter.
Winds blowing in off the Atlantic Ocean carry moisture.
When this wet air hits the mountains on the west coast, it rises and dumps its cargo of water mostly in the form of rain.
It's wet here in Lochaber.
It's really wet.
It gets seven times the annual rainfall of London.
Now, the rain may not be very nice to work in, but if you've got that amount of water, you might as well use it.
So they do for power, hydro-electric power.
In the decades before World War Two these high glens became a kind of power house for the production of aluminium.
The Highlands were the only place in Britain where enough cheap electricity could be generated to smelt the precious metal from raw ore.
When World War Two broke out, the Highland smelters went into overdrive to supply the war effort, pouring out thousands of tons of vital aluminium and helping to win the Battle of Britain.
The hydro-powered smelter at Lochaber is still in production.
Today it has an output of 45,000 tons of aluminium every year.
It's amazing, really, that this place that provided the material to make Spitfires now provides the material to make the foil that you forget to cover the turkey with.
And that is all down to the ice age, to the shape of the Highland valleys, to the shape of the Highlands themselves, to moist air coming from the Atlantic and tons and tons and tons of rain.
I love exploring the ice-carved landscape of the Scottish Highlands.
The deep glaciers that sculpted these high, hidden glens may have long disappeared, but there is one corner where the ice ages have never quite relinquished their grip.
The Cairngorm Mountains are the roof of Britain.
In the winter this high, granite plateau endures weeks of whiteouts and blizzards.
Even during the summer months the snow clings on.
This is one place that gives you a hint of how it would have been.
And there are some animals that live up here that you really wouldn't expect to see in the British Isles.
Uh-huh.
They're reindeer! Fiona Smith was born and brought up in these mountains and she's been involved in looking after the herd since she was a wee young thing.
I feel like I'm part of some surreal film set, Fiona.
These are reindeer.
They are real reindeer.
We are here.
How many do you have? We've got about 130 in the whole herd.
Every single one's got a name and I can tell them all apart.
You know every single name.
Absolutely.
Really? What's this one? - That one there is Ringo.
- Ringo Starr.
After Ringo Starr, yep.
- That one over there? - That's Puddick.
- This one? - That's Tanner.
He's a yearling bull.
- You really do know them all.
- I do know every single one.
So what makes this herd so special? The Cairngorms is the only place in Britain that reindeer can still live naturally.
It's the only subarctic eco-system.
So it is a very unique herd.
These reindeer are marvellously adapted to the cold conditions.
Their thick, dense coat is made up of millions of hollow hairs that provide incredible insulation.
They also have very wide hooves, natural snow shoes that spread their weight as they make their way across thick drifts.
When you listen to them walking around you can hear that "click, click, click".
What's that? The clicking noise is a tendon in the back foot.
So every step they take, it slips over bone, and it's a natural communication method, so when they're in whiteout conditions they can stay together as a herd by hearing that click.
So, again, that's part of their adaptation for this landscape.
- Yep.
- It's incredible, isn't it? The picture-postcard landscape of Scotland is really the result of its turbulent past and has had an enormous influence on life up here, Uisge Beatha, the water of life - whisky.
The Island of Islay is famous for it.
There are no fewer than eight distilleries here, all making unique single malts.
And to understand what makes whisky from Islay so particular you have to go back to the end of the last ice age.
Around 10,000 years ago the ice sheets that had covered the Highlands melted.
The glaciers had stripped the land right back, leaving behind little more than bare, rain swept rock.
Not ideal conditions for anything to grow.
But there is one plant that didn't just manage to colonise this cold, wet landscape, it completely reshaped it.
This is a remarkable plant.
This is called sphagnum moss and it can hold up to 20 times its weight in water.
Incidentally, it also has antiseptic qualities.
It was used as wound dressing in The Great War, although I wouldn't advise that use at home.
I would stick with the cream.
But when this stuff decays and dies it doesn't just disappear, it compacts to form this - a peat bog.
Half the land surface of the Highlands and islands is blanketed in peat bogs.
They might seem wet and inhospitable places, but they've been crucial to life here.
There are virtually no coal seams in the Highlands, and very little woodland.
Peat, which is basically decayed moss, is all they have for fuel.
Until very recently nearly everyone relied on dried peat for heating and cooking and the fragrant smell of peat smoke would have wafted across the landscape.
It's a unique aroma, and it's still a vital ingredient of Islay's whiskies.
- Hi, Arthur.
- Hiya.
So why is peat so important in distilling? Well, it's very, very important for the flavour of the malt.
You can really taste the difference between an unpeated malt and a heavily peated malt like Laphroaig.
This is actually still very damp.
Does that matter? You wouldn't normally burn a wet thing, would you? No, but the more moisture in the peat, the better, really.
It keeps the flames to a minimum and you get more smoke off it.
Ah, it's all about the smoke.
But, actually, the unique taste of Islay malt was a happy accident.
Yes, I think I've discovered where all the smoke goes.
Originally, peat fires were used to dry the barley grain, which is the basic whisky ingredient.
Nowadays the smoke is just used to add flavour.
And it's some flavour.
- Right, so this is the end of the process, isn't it? - Yeah, this is it.
And we're gonna be able to taste the peat in this? We should be able to, yeah.
Whoa.
I really want one of them.
- Can I smell it? - Yeah, yeah, you should.
And then I'll get some of the liquid out.
- It kind of makes your eyes water slightly.
- It's strong alcohol in there.
Probably about 55 percent.
- 55.
- Yeah.
Which is just the way I like it.
Good luck, head.
Good luck, throat.
Slàinte.
- Can you taste the peat? - Oh, you can.
You really can, can't you? Absolutely delicious.
It's quite medicinal, actually, isn't it? Well, funny you should say that.
During Prohibition we still managed to sell Laphroaig into America and you could get a prescription from your doctor for some Laphroaig medicine.
A prescription for whisky.
That's a very understanding doctor.
So, whether your bottle of peaty malt whisky is 10, 15 or 30 years old, it gets its character from a landscape scoured by glaciers 10,000 years ago.
And when you look at the Highlands themselves, you're seeing the result of violent events over billions of years.
Continents smashed together and built mountains.
The landscape has been ripped apart and torn to bits, then buried under sheets of ice.
The Highlands are where Britain began.
It's one of the oldest landscapes on the planet.
We've travelled to all four corners of Britain, and we've seen that it boasts not just some of the world's oldest landscapes, but also, for a country our size, we have the greatest variety of landscapes in the world.
And it's all down to our volatile past.
That past has left us with a countryside we both love.
The great British countryside.
We've got it all, really.
Cornwall and Devon, shaped by the tug of war between the land, the sea and the weather.
Tough, craggy, and still Britain's favourite holiday destination.
Yorkshire - incredible rock formations, carved and sculpted by massive forces of ice and water, where the folk are officially the happiest in Britain.
The South Downs - the very opposite of the Highlands, comfortable, dependable, but built on fragile, crumbly chalk that was once at the bottom of a vast ocean.
The British landscape is still changing, all the time, just very, very slowly.
Which Hugh is keen to demonstrate one last time somewhere warm.
Because even the Highlands are getting higher.
As we sit here we are moving upwards.
Well, the Highlands of Scotland are moving upwards.
- And it's down to that stuff.
- What, whisky? Ice.
It's down to ice.
Because when the Highlands of Scotland were heavily glaciated, the weight of the ice was very great.
And once that was removed, you get this thing called isostatic rebound.
- You're such a show-off.
- Yeah.
Isostatic rebound.
I can say it as often as you like.
- Say it again.
- Isostatic rebound.
Scotland is going up by two millimetres a year.
And the country is like a seesaw and southern England is going down two millimetres a year to balance it.
- It's not a lot, is it? - It's nothing to worry about.
It's barely any movement at all.
It's like 25 years, 5 centimetres.
Should we sit here for 25 years, do you think? No, we shouldn't.
- Maybe if we had lots of this we could.
- We could.
- Slàinte! - Slàinte mhath!
And very, very old.
For three billion years, these British Isles have been growing and changing.
They've never stood still.
If you love the British landscape the way we both do, then you might be very familiar with it, but there is another story to be told.
The story that's always fascinated me, of what happened here those millions of years ago.
And how that still affects our lives every day.
Hey, look out! They could cause some damage.
For a country of our size, we have a greater variety of landscapes than anywhere else on earth.
It's all down to our dramatic history.
Over millions of years, we've been flooded, frozen and ravaged by mighty earth movements.
What's even more astonishing is how that distant past still shapes the countryside today.
I'm alive! We're going to all four corners of the country to discover how Britain's epic past lives on in the most surprising ways.
I'm ready for adventuring, but you're the geology buff.
Where to first? - I want to go everywhere.
- Of course you do.
I'm a boy! - Can I come with you? - Yeah.
- Where are you going? - Is this a footpath? If there's a part of Britain that says rugged and remote, it's the Highlands of Scotland.
Look at that! It's Britain's last wilderness, where whatever you get up to feels a little bit adventurous.
Ha-ha! It's the oldest part of Britain and one of the oldest places in the world.
Fantastic landscape.
Almost as old as I feel.
Of all the different parts of the UK, it's the Highlands that draw me back time and again, but there are a few surprises around here.
Whoa! And it's not a place to take for granted.
The cold has really taken hold of me now.
The wild landscape of the Highlands has shaped life here in the unlikeliest ways.
I think I might stick to trousers.
And it's all here thanks to a violent past.
This is a landscape made by fire and ice and massive upheaval.
Its past is written all over its face.
We're going to unravel the story of how the Highlands got to be so wild and, well, high.
I think the Highlands is fantastic in absolutely every kind of weather.
I can just feel that lovely drizzle on my face.
Which I don't normally like, but here I'm very, very happy because it's just so beautiful.
It's beautiful and it's empty, and I imagine it's very, very hard to get a pizza.
- We could try, though.
I've got a mobile.
- You'd get a quid off it.
There's no way they're gonna deliver it in 20 minutes.
You'd need a hell of a moped! This is the most extreme landscape in the country: 15,000 square miles of ruggedness, with Britain's highest mountains, deepest lakes and wildest weather.
It's no place for the faint-hearted, and just the place for Britain's most extreme cycle challenge.
Every year hundreds of cyclists tackle Bealach Na Ba, the high mountain pass that leads to a remote place called Applecross in the northwest Highlands.
It's the longest, steepest mountain road in the country: Six lung-bursting miles from sea level to summit.
It's a monster! Tough.
Start slowly and finish slower.
Now I am going to have a go at it myself, partly because I really love cycling, partly because I've been told I have to, but mostly because at the top you get a glimpse into Britain's past.
Bealach Na Ba.
Applecross.
Probably a delightful place to go.
Unfortunately, to get there, I'm gonna have to cycle to a height of 2,053 feet.
Gradients of 1 in 5.
And hairpin bends.
The road to Applecross takes you through some of the wildest and most spectacular scenery in the country.
Perfect for taking your mind off the pain of climbing it.
But it also takes you back in time, back to before Britain was born.
It's hard to imagine, but once this land wasn't even joined to what we now think of as Britain, and it would have been much flatter and much easier to cycle.
I wonder if I can get a leg transplant? Because what is now incredibly tough terrain is also incredibly old.
In fact, this remote corner of the Highlands is one of the oldest places on planet earth.
Fantastic landscape.
It's ancient.
It's almost as old as I feel at this moment.
Is this the top? Wooh.
Look at that.
That is almost worth it.
But it's not just the spectacular view I've come up for.
I'm after something else just as impressive.
There's really nowhere else like this in Britain.
And that's not surprising, because this landscape was formed way before the rest of Britain even existed.
This sandstone is a billion years old.
And not even this at that age comes anywhere near winning The Oldest Rock Competition in this area.
Because this beautiful stripy rock, which is called gneiss, was cooked and crushed about three billion years ago.
"What's on telly tonight?" "When's the weekend?" Or "Who's coming at Christmas?" That is an unimaginable length of time.
This was part of the original earth's crust.
Fortunately, it has cooled down a bit since then.
For me this place is really the essence of the Highlands: Craggy, remote and unimaginably old.
It all looks so beautiful now, so permanent but these mountains haven't always been here.
There's nowhere in Britain like the Highlands.
And it doesn't just look different, it feels different.
When you go back in time you understand why.
This is a place with a massive, dramatic story.
It's pretty mind-boggling.
There was a time when the whole of Britain was just a broken jigsaw of scattered bits of land.
450 million years ago the world looked nothing like it does now.
Scotland was on the other side of the globe, part of a massive continent that also contained North America.
To the south was a chain of islands that contained England and Wales.
Over time these two land masses crunched into each other.
This collision created the Scottish Highlands, part of a huge new mountain range.
These peaks ran for thousands of miles and were as high as the Himalayas.
The Scottish Highlands we're so familiar with now are just a remnant of those ancient mountains.
After 400 million years of erosion the landscape has changed enormously.
But you can still see what this powerful collision created.
Especially from the air.
Ace pilot, David West, has taken off from here on Loch Lomond hundreds of times.
That's us on our way.
Whoo! Whoa! Which is just as well because I've managed to choose one of the wildest days of the year to fly on.
This is getting very hairy.
- Let's go and find some smooth air, guys.
- Let's.
I think this will be worth the pain.
God, look at that! That's stunning! Definitely worth it.
The continental pile-up didn't just make mountains, it also created huge cracks in the rocks, called fault lines.
And one of these massive cracks runs right across Loch Lomond.
It's called the Highland Boundary Fault.
From the air you can make out where the crack happened, from that line of rocks, which were once deep inside the fault itself.
Now they're just remains, forming a dotted line of islands that run straight across the water.
They mark out just one stretch of an enormous fault line that slices for nearly 200 miles from one side of Scotland to the other.
The Highland Boundary Fault Line marks the edge of the Highlands.
To the south is flat land, to the north mountains.
This is where the Highlands begin.
The Highland Boundary Fault Line is one of the most dramatic features in the British landscape.
It's basically this huge fracture line which is the result of a continental pile-up when Scotland smashed into England and Wales.
Hundreds of millions of years later people that live along the fault line are still feeling the aftershocks.
I think I'm still feeling some myself now as well.
Or is it just turbulence? It might not look it, but the Highland landscape has been rocked to the core.
In some places its shaky history lives on all these millions of years later.
This little town of Comrie sits halfway along the Highland Boundary Fault.
The land around the fault is still on the move, and when it does move the town trembles.
Over the centuries Comrie has had so many shocks and tremors - that locals know it by another name.
- Shaky Toon.
Shaky Toon! Shaky Toon! In October 1839 a large earthquake hit Comrie.
As the ground shook the locals panicked and crowded into the church to pray.
This was only the beginning.
For the next seven years Comrie was afflicted by an almost Biblical plague of earthquakes.
On some days there were dozens of tremors.
It's quite strange to think about that happening in Britain.
It must have been petrifying.
For scientists these quakes were fascinating.
In this remote Highland village early geologists saw a chance to improve their understanding of earthquakes.
On the edge of Comrie is a small building and inside there is some very odd-looking equipment.
Earthquake expert, Roger Musson, has studied the remarkable history of this place.
What have we got here, Roger? What is this little building? This is, effectively, the world's very first purpose-built earthquake observatory, constructed in late 1874, early 1875, to try and record the earthquakes that were affecting Comrie.
I don't want to be rude, but it looks like something you could hang your coat on.
It does a bit, yes.
All it is is a set of little wooden pegs balanced on their ends, and if the earthquake comes along, then some of those pegs will fall over in the shaking.
If it's a small earthquake, then only the smallest pegs will fall over.
If it's a big earthquake, all the pegs will fall over.
Very simple.
It was actually crude even in the 1870s.
And does it work? Did it work? The earthquakes which they were expecting to ramp up, as they did in the late 1830s, 1840s, didn't.
They just died away after these initial shocks.
So the pegs have never fallen down in the history of the building.
Well, we thought it was a shame that this scientific sleeping beauty has never been awakened, so we're going to create our own mini-earthquake using gunpowder.
Victorian scientists experimented with gunpowder to find out how shock waves travelled through the ground.
We're using 100 grams of explosives to create our own tremor.
Ear protectors on.
But will it be enough to trigger this 19th-century seismometer? I just hope we don't knock the little house down.
Three, two, one, go.
Ooh! Cor! I could feel that.
I felt a little jolt.
Very good.
Well, let's go and see whether there was a jolt experienced up on the hill.
Nothing.
OK.
We'll have to try more explosive, I think.
This time we're hoping half a kilo of gunpowder will pack enough punch.
Three, two, one, go.
Whoa! I definitely felt that.
- It really was like a shell blast.
- Definite movement there.
- Well, shall we go and check? - Let's go and see.
Let's go check.
Any luck this time? Nothing.
I've always said that thing's insensitive and there's the proof today.
Half a kilo of explosives wasn't enough to make Earthquake House shake.
In fact, it's thought that the original tremors that rocked Comrie were equivalent to 200 tons of gunpowder going off.
And they could still happen again.
The Highlands look so peaceful now, you really wouldn't think of this landscape being rocked by earth movements that have shifted Scotland this way and that.
But as well as the Highland Boundary Fault, further north is another great tear.
It's called the Great Glen Fault, and when you see it on a map, it looks as if the top of Scotland was ripped off, and reattached with a zip.
You do so love a map, don't you? I do love a map.
Yeah.
- Why? - Because if you have a satnav or something you can never really tell where you are.
It's like driving in a tunnel, isn't it? But if you have a map, you can see the big picture.
And this is the big picture of Scotland.
And about 430 million years ago Scotland didn't look like that.
So you're tearing through Loch Ness there.
Loch Ness, down the Great Glen.
Scotland looked like that.
And then it shifted.
It moved north up the line of the Great Glen, which is a tear fault, and it went a bit beyond where it is now.
And then 350 million years ago it went back again.
It's like Strictly Come Dancing, this map! It went about 75 miles that way and about 4 miles that way until eventually we end up with what we think of as Scotland.
And whose fault is that? That is appalling.
And this is what that massive rip looks like for real.
This is the Great Glen, and this great fault line one side of the Highlands to the other.
It can rightfully claim to be the longest, deepest crack in Britain.
All along its path, the Great Glen is flooded by a chain of big lakes.
The biggest and the deepest is, of course, Loch Ness.
Plenty of people have come here in search of monsters.
But some have come in search of something else.
Speed.
Ha-ha! Everything about this vast loch is shaped by the fact that it sits in a fault line.
Loch Ness is 23 miles long and it's absolutely dead straight.
It's the perfect race track.
Ha ha ha! Whoo! Speed fans and adventurers have been drawn here for decades.
The most daring of them all was a British racing driver called John Cobb.
John Cobb was the fastest man on earth.
Back in 1947 he smashed the land speed record in the Utah desert.
Five years later Cobb came here to Loch Ness to try and become the fastest man on water.
One local, then a boy, saw it all happen: Gordon Menzies.
Gordon, you were 13 years old when John Cobb came here with Crusader, his jet boat.
That's right.
Middle of August, 1952.
And I actually have a picture here.
That's John Cobb himself.
This is Crusader.
- And that's me.
- That's you! - Why were you here? - My father owned the place.
It was kept in one of my father's sheds.
We were on holiday from school, so this is where we spent every waking hour, watching what was going on.
- It's proper Boy's Own stuff, isn't it? - It was incredible.
I would have absolutely loved someone to turn up with a jet-engine powered boat at my house.
So did we.
So did we.
Gordon is taking me out on Loch Ness to retrace the route John Cobb took 60 years ago.
We're joined by a man who's devoted his career to unravelling the mysteries of Loch Ness - Adrian Shine.
So we're not far now, are we, from where John made his run? Why did he choose Loch Ness in the first place? Well, Loch Ness is a very long, straight body of water, which you wanted if you were going to go over 200 miles an hour.
But it was a trap.
Because unfortunately, although this fault is long and straight, and very regular, it is aligned precisely with our prevailing southwest wind.
It's like a wind tunnel.
So he had very few opportunities to test the boat, to run it up to speed.
Thanks to the alignment of the loch, what Cobb thought of as the perfect racetrack, was too windy for him to test the boat properly.
Undeterred and under pressure to make the run, on 29th September 1952, Cobb decided to go for the record, anyway.
He managed to clock a speed of over 200mph, faster than anyone on water before.
But, powering back down the loch he hit a single wave, which punctured an undiscovered weak spot in the hull.
In a few horrifying seconds the Crusader broke up and Cobb was killed.
Around Loch Ness Cobb is remembered as a great British hero.
He was a big, quiet gentleman.
He would always speak to you.
There were no airs and graces about the man.
He obviously just loved to go fast.
The Great Glen forms a kind of natural highway that cuts through the Highlands from coast to coast.
250 years ago, the benefit of that natural highway was obvious to the British Army.
This is Fort George.
A massive military base guarding the narrow entrance to the Great Glen.
And it was built during a dark time in Scotland's history.
In 1745 Bonnie Prince Charlie and his Highland supporters attempted to overthrow the British Crown.
The rebellion failed but the British military decided not to chance any repeats.
And that's why they built Fort George.
It was military engineering on a colossal, landscape-changing scale.
This wasn't just defence, this was intimidation.
This is the place they chose, because if you control the entrance to the Great Glen, you control the only easy way through the rugged Highland landscape.
But conditions for the troops stationed in this cold, exposed place could be brutal.
There are stories on men on sentry duty being found frozen to death at their posts.
No wonder the soldiers called this place Fort Misery.
Company shun! In the 18th century the garrison at Fort George was drawn from all over Britain.
Army life hasn't changed much, but nowadays the men on parade are from all over the world.
Shun! So where's everybody from? Tell me where you're from.
- I'm from Malawi.
- From Malawi.
- Nairobi, Kenya.
- From Fiji.
- Northampton.
- Northampton.
- I'm from Malawi.
- Malawi as well.
So, from all over the world.
How long have you been here? - Three weeks now.
- Three weeks? Yes.
- How are you adapting to the weather here? - It's a bit hard.
It's windy, freezing.
You're from Nairobi.
You've been here how long? Six weeks now.
What was your first impression of Fort George when you saw it? It's not a modern type of a camp, but it's a good place to be.
If you talk of history, I think it's a good place for history.
- Very much so.
- But very cold.
- Very cold.
- Very cold.
Thanks, guys.
I'll buy you all thermal underwear and post it to you! Fort George is all about location, location, location, and the military have cleverly exploited land and sea.
But they aren't the only ones to understand the strategic importance of this place.
The waters around Fort George are home to a very special pod of bottlenose dolphins.
They can be found here pretty much every day, which is unusual for this species.
The reason they're able to live here all year round is because they've cottoned on to one of the benefits of the local geology - a never-ending supply of fine Scottish fish.
For 20 years Charlie Phillips has watched and photographed the dolphins here, opposite Fort George.
Hi, Charlie.
- Hi, Julia.
How are you? - So this is how you spend your days? Yeah.
It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it.
Now, why are you almost always - and I say that with a slight hint of caution - almost always guaranteed dolphin in this locality? The geology that we have here is really why the dolphins are here.
They come to this specific area because the tide comes past the tip of this peninsula very rapidly.
And the dolphins sit at one end of you could almost call it a supermarket conveyor belt.
And there's fish coming along this conveyor belt.
It's like The Generation Game for dolphins.
They can take their pick.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Their favourite food is salmon and that's something the Highland landscape provides in abundance.
The ancient glens that run down to this stretch of coastline contain some of Britain's richest salmon rivers.
Every year, as the salmon head up the Great Glen to spawn, they're funnelled through a deep, narrow channel right by Fort George.
It's the perfect place for dolphins to stage an ambush.
And the perfect place for people to spot dolphins.
I know of no other place on planet earth like this.
This is completely unique, where the people that you can see standing at the very edge of the beach could quite easily have a dolphin ten feet from them, and they're standing on dry land.
That's pretty amazing.
Unfortunately, it's typical Highland weather today and the choppy water makes it tricky to spot anything among the waves.
But suddenly Ooh, there we go.
There we go.
There we go, yeah.
A couple of dorsal fins.
Ooh-hoo-hoo.
Yes! Despite the bad weather, I did manage to see a dolphin.
Well, a bit of a dolphin.
A little bit of a dolphin.
We've seen how the collision of ancient continents created the mountains of Scotland and some of its greatest natural features.
Now we're going to discover how the violent geology of the past also lies behind some of Scotland's most familiar culture.
Where are Trinny and Susannah when you need them? How dangerous extinct volcanoes created the need for mountain rescue services on the island of Skye.
Go find! Go find! How plants from the bogs of the Highlands helped flavour Scotland's favourite export.
It kind of makes your eyes water slightly.
We'll get a glimpse into life in Scotland during the ice ages.
- These are reindeer? - They are reindeer.
They are real reindeer.
We are here.
And find out how that most familiar feature of the Highlands powered us to victory in the war.
It's wet here in Lochaber.
It's really wet.
The dramatic landscape of Skye makes it one of the most popular tourist destinations in the whole of the Highlands and islands.
But what most visitors don't know is that humans aren't the first to walk across this landscape.
I'm hoping to track down traces of the island's surprising past.
Dugald Ross and his daughter Catriona know exactly where to look.
All will be revealed with a sweep of a broom! - Hi, Dugald.
- Hi, Hugh.
Nice to see you.
Hi, Catriona.
So, what's this? What we see there is the imprint of a species of dinosaur called Meglasaurus.
Oh, wow, look at that.
It's a three-pronged dinosaur footprint.
That's huge.
And this is the actual surface that the dinosaur would have left the print in.
Yes, that's in situ.
As opposed to others which are found in loose rocks.
- Wow.
So a rippled beach.
- Yes.
Ripples similar to what we find on the local beach.
Like a dinosaur walking in wet concrete.
You'd be very cross with that.
If you were a workman, you'd be very cross with that.
Wouldn't you? And how big would that be? Well, to use the broom and the shovel If I point them in opposite directions that would be about there.
- So that's the tail to there, top of the head.
- So that's Wow.
That's quite frightening.
Would you find it frightening, if you met a dinosaur that size? Yeah, it would be really scary.
It's amazing that a dinosaur footprint could survive pretty much untouched on a British beach for 170 million years.
I'd be pushed to survive more than about 15 minutes.
Dugald has mentioned that he's found one or two more fossils.
Turns out he was being characteristically modest.
There are hundreds of them.
Wow, you've got a whole collection of dinosaur footprints.
Quite a few in here, yes.
- Have you collected all these yourself? - Most of them.
Starting at a very early age? I think I was an unusual teenager.
I first started when I was about 15.
- Where did you keep them? - Under the bed.
Under the bed.
Fantastic.
I love this one over here.
- Which is enormous, isn't it? - Yes, yes.
That particular one is quite important, scientifically.
That is the first recorded dinosaur footprint from Scotland.
Dugald's schoolboy craze has ended up in an absolutely astonishing collection of fossils.
And what is most intriguing is that they're a clue to another piece of ancient history: Scotland and North America were once joined together.
So, do you like these fossils, Catriona? Which is your favourite of them? I like this one because there's the baby dinosaur footprints and then there's the adult dinosaur footprints.
- Are these the baby dinosaur footprints? - Yeah.
This is a great thing.
- And this is from Skye? - Indeed, yes.
But identical ones have been found in Wyoming.
Wyoming? It makes sense because Skye and North America were part of the same land mass during the middle Jurassic Period.
- So the Atlantic wasn't there at all.
- No, no.
After this footprint was laid down It's rather like this slab, isn't it? That the Atlantic opened up, separating the two land masses.
So if that's Skye, and this is North America, it just sort of This became the Atlantic and it just spread the two places further and further apart.
Yeah.
You'd be a bit annoyed if you were a dinosaur and you had a mate on the other side of it.
I can imagine, yeah.
So, a few dinosaur footprints on a beach in Skye point to another violent instalment in the Highlands' past.
A mere 170 million years ago Scotland broke off from North America, as the Atlantic Ocean welled up between them.
As the earth's crust cracked open molten magma poured out.
It created a chain of mile-high volcanoes that towered over the west coast of Scotland.
The remains of these volcanoes still dominate the landscape today.
These are the Cuillin Mountains in the south of the island of Skye.
They're all that remain of those volcanoes, but they still form one of the most dramatic landscapes in Europe.
These ridges rise to over 3,000 feet, great peaks made of razor-sharp rock with uncompromising names, gabbro and basalt, that once formed deep in the heart of a volcano.
The Cuillins are a Mecca for mountaineers, but the sheer rock faces are a tough climb and accidents happen pretty frequently.
Out here you need to have someone you can depend on if you get into trouble.
This is Cuillin.
She's a five-year-old border collie, and she knows these mountains like the back of her paw.
She and her handler, Tony, just there, are part of a search and rescue team.
So, if you get into trouble, these guys might well save your bacon.
I should really say "haggis" when I'm here, shouldn't I? - OK, Julia, are you ready? - Yeah.
Indeed.
There you go.
Pass the leash.
Cuillin has been fully qualified for two years, but she and Tony never stop training.
The aim of today's exercise is to see if Cuillin can find Jonah who's lying injured somewhere in the volcanic landscape.
- OK, Julia.
This is where we're going to set up.
- OK.
So we're going to send Jonah out there.
In the nicest possible way, Jonah, go and get lost! OK.
And then once you harness her up she knows that it's work mode, yeah? When she sees that harness ready to go on, she knows she's going to work.
What makes these mountains so treacherous, apart from the terrible weather, the changeable weather? Well, we've got two types of rock here, mainly gabbro and basalt.
And erm the gabbro's good.
You know, it's really good sound rock.
But the problem is with the basalt rock it gets brittle, and we get quite a lot of people having accidents because they're pulling on it and it just comes away.
So you've got one really good solid rock that climbers love and then another crumbly Basalt.
It's very crumbly and it's very slippy as well.
Cuillin is a border collie, a dog that's just right for treacherous terrain like this.
Her speed and stamina means that she can cover miles of broken, rocky terrain faster than any human.
And that can make all the difference for an injured climber.
OK.
You ready? You ready? Go find! Go find! There she goes.
They work together and you'll see that she keeps coming back to Tony.
And that's partly to make sure that he's safe as well.
And the bell.
You know what the little bell's for.
Boy, wouldn't that be a welcome sound if you were stuck somewhere out here? We've been chatting for five, ten minutes, and the cold has really taken hold of me now.
I would not like to be stuck with a broken leg or a twisted ankle somewhere out here.
You wouldn't survive for very long.
This may be a training exercise today, but in reality this is life or death stuff.
Last year Cuillin and Tony were really put to the test.
Six climbers had become stuck in a snowstorm high in the mountains.
It was completely dark, and there was a blizzard blowing, but Cuillin managed to find the group and all of them made it out safely.
There we go.
She's heading back to Tony now, to lead him to where she thinks the body might be.
I don't know about Cuillin, but Tony's a fit bloke.
That's Jonah, isn't it? What have you got there? Show me.
Show me.
What have you got? Show me.
What have you got? Yes, it is.
Yeah.
Good girl! Good girl! Yes.
Job done.
Good girl! Yeah.
Good girl.
As a kid I holidayed in the Highlands.
"Don't worry.
It'll clear up soon.
" And that was right, because this far north and this far up the weather can change in an instant.
So the people who live here all year round have always had to be prepared.
If you were to ask me what clothes you should bring with you to the Scottish Highlands, I would say waterproof jacket, waterproof trousers, waterproof shoes, shorts, T-shirts and a pair of flip-flops.
Because it can be incredibly changeable here - beautiful one minute, ridiculously harsh the next.
Of course, in the past, most Highlanders would have lived several centuries from the nearest cagoule, so they were forced to develop a style of clothing uniquely suited to these conditions.
Its modern manifestation is this, the kilt.
You wear it a bit lower, obviously.
This, though, is the culmination of generations of Highlands style.
Probably about there is best.
What Paraig MacNeil doesn't know about traditional Highland clothing isn't worth knowing.
He looks like the man to tell me how this challenging landscape has influenced these clothes.
This, I should point out, is not his house.
But we're going for the full traditional experience, smoke and all.
Paraig, you look fantastic.
What are you wearing? I'm wearing the The old highland dress.
The belted plaid.
This is one piece of cloth.
It serves as your kilt, your cloak, your tent, your sleeping bag.
It's nature gift to mountain people.
That's fantastic.
It's almost like the Swiss Army Knife of clothing.
And what about the colours, then? These are traditional.
This one for example, it's my own design.
This is "the heather of the summer".
So you have your purples, your greens and your browns.
Essentially, you are camouflaged in the landscape.
It's a camouflage.
The early tartans were exactly that.
What we call This is a lot less garish than you'd expect from a normal tartan.
The early dyes that were used for the production of tartan I've got some of them here wrapped up in this wee handkerchief.
This is heather.
The tops of this could be used for greens.
The roots could be used for making yellows.
Here we have some very small lichen colours.
Very nice.
These would be used for making yellows.
This is bark of tree.
You can make black from that, or variant shades of brown.
So it was all natural colours taken from the land? It's the mirror of the landscape, that's what it is.
This is the landscape, this is the heart, this is the soul of the people in fabric.
The plaid might be an incredibly practical garment to wear Not too tight.
Probably about here, I would say.
but it's not exactly just something you slip into.
There we go.
So, if you can stand up very carefully.
I'll show you what to do.
Put that round your shoulder.
Let's have a wee look.
- Where's your kneecaps? - Where are my kneecaps? - Yeah.
- Well, they're on my legs.
They're here.
Ah, good.
I'm glad they're still there.
OK, good.
Excellent.
That's pretty good, actually.
- Do you want to tighten the belt yourself now? - Yeah.
I'd very much like to tighten it myself.
Good.
Do you know, I think I might stick to trousers.
Next thing is the waistcoat.
- There's more? - There's more.
If you would Oh, I like that.
It's a bit Keith Richards, this, isn't it? And this is an overcoat.
- There we are.
- I've got a sense of freedom wearing this.
Yes.
- But also, if I'm honest, my legs are quite cold.
- Uh-huh.
Where are Trinny and Susannah when you need them? Eh? The Scottish Highlands are unique.
History, culture, wildlife, everything about this dramatic place is shaped by a landscape that took three billion years to make.
It began with ancient rocks cooked and crushed long before the rest of Britain had even been born.
The mountains were built by a gigantic collision.
And then Scotland itself was ripped from North America in a series of fiery eruptions.
And if that wasn't enough, there was another massive, landscape-changing event.
Two-and-a-half million years ago Britain went into deep freeze.
The Scottish mountains were blanketed by ice sheets.
Glaciers gouged out deep glens and carved high narrow ridges.
It was the ice ages that created the Highlands as we know it today - barren and beautiful.
But this is also a landscape which has proved very useful to us in rather unexpected ways.
Because these hills and these valleys, created by the ice that froze Britain, also helped us win the Battle of Britain.
In the summer of 1940 Britain was fighting for its life.
A few hundred Hurricanes and Spitfires were all that stood between us and defeat.
And we were losing those aircraft at a terrifying rate.
To replace them we needed one thing above all.
Aluminium.
We think of aluminium now as a fairly ordinary, everyday material, but it's not so long ago, that because it was so expensive to make, this was regarded as a precious metal.
Fortunately, by the war they had cracked the process and it became cheaper.
Because the lightness and the strength of aluminium made it perfect for aircraft components.
There's just one problem with its manufacture, though.
And that is that it takes electricity.
Lots and lots and lots of electricity.
Which is why the ice ages were so important.
The glaciers carved a landscape of high narrow valleys that was perfectly shaped to trap and store water.
As the ice ages came to an end the climate here didn't just become warmer, it became wetter.
Winds blowing in off the Atlantic Ocean carry moisture.
When this wet air hits the mountains on the west coast, it rises and dumps its cargo of water mostly in the form of rain.
It's wet here in Lochaber.
It's really wet.
It gets seven times the annual rainfall of London.
Now, the rain may not be very nice to work in, but if you've got that amount of water, you might as well use it.
So they do for power, hydro-electric power.
In the decades before World War Two these high glens became a kind of power house for the production of aluminium.
The Highlands were the only place in Britain where enough cheap electricity could be generated to smelt the precious metal from raw ore.
When World War Two broke out, the Highland smelters went into overdrive to supply the war effort, pouring out thousands of tons of vital aluminium and helping to win the Battle of Britain.
The hydro-powered smelter at Lochaber is still in production.
Today it has an output of 45,000 tons of aluminium every year.
It's amazing, really, that this place that provided the material to make Spitfires now provides the material to make the foil that you forget to cover the turkey with.
And that is all down to the ice age, to the shape of the Highland valleys, to the shape of the Highlands themselves, to moist air coming from the Atlantic and tons and tons and tons of rain.
I love exploring the ice-carved landscape of the Scottish Highlands.
The deep glaciers that sculpted these high, hidden glens may have long disappeared, but there is one corner where the ice ages have never quite relinquished their grip.
The Cairngorm Mountains are the roof of Britain.
In the winter this high, granite plateau endures weeks of whiteouts and blizzards.
Even during the summer months the snow clings on.
This is one place that gives you a hint of how it would have been.
And there are some animals that live up here that you really wouldn't expect to see in the British Isles.
Uh-huh.
They're reindeer! Fiona Smith was born and brought up in these mountains and she's been involved in looking after the herd since she was a wee young thing.
I feel like I'm part of some surreal film set, Fiona.
These are reindeer.
They are real reindeer.
We are here.
How many do you have? We've got about 130 in the whole herd.
Every single one's got a name and I can tell them all apart.
You know every single name.
Absolutely.
Really? What's this one? - That one there is Ringo.
- Ringo Starr.
After Ringo Starr, yep.
- That one over there? - That's Puddick.
- This one? - That's Tanner.
He's a yearling bull.
- You really do know them all.
- I do know every single one.
So what makes this herd so special? The Cairngorms is the only place in Britain that reindeer can still live naturally.
It's the only subarctic eco-system.
So it is a very unique herd.
These reindeer are marvellously adapted to the cold conditions.
Their thick, dense coat is made up of millions of hollow hairs that provide incredible insulation.
They also have very wide hooves, natural snow shoes that spread their weight as they make their way across thick drifts.
When you listen to them walking around you can hear that "click, click, click".
What's that? The clicking noise is a tendon in the back foot.
So every step they take, it slips over bone, and it's a natural communication method, so when they're in whiteout conditions they can stay together as a herd by hearing that click.
So, again, that's part of their adaptation for this landscape.
- Yep.
- It's incredible, isn't it? The picture-postcard landscape of Scotland is really the result of its turbulent past and has had an enormous influence on life up here, Uisge Beatha, the water of life - whisky.
The Island of Islay is famous for it.
There are no fewer than eight distilleries here, all making unique single malts.
And to understand what makes whisky from Islay so particular you have to go back to the end of the last ice age.
Around 10,000 years ago the ice sheets that had covered the Highlands melted.
The glaciers had stripped the land right back, leaving behind little more than bare, rain swept rock.
Not ideal conditions for anything to grow.
But there is one plant that didn't just manage to colonise this cold, wet landscape, it completely reshaped it.
This is a remarkable plant.
This is called sphagnum moss and it can hold up to 20 times its weight in water.
Incidentally, it also has antiseptic qualities.
It was used as wound dressing in The Great War, although I wouldn't advise that use at home.
I would stick with the cream.
But when this stuff decays and dies it doesn't just disappear, it compacts to form this - a peat bog.
Half the land surface of the Highlands and islands is blanketed in peat bogs.
They might seem wet and inhospitable places, but they've been crucial to life here.
There are virtually no coal seams in the Highlands, and very little woodland.
Peat, which is basically decayed moss, is all they have for fuel.
Until very recently nearly everyone relied on dried peat for heating and cooking and the fragrant smell of peat smoke would have wafted across the landscape.
It's a unique aroma, and it's still a vital ingredient of Islay's whiskies.
- Hi, Arthur.
- Hiya.
So why is peat so important in distilling? Well, it's very, very important for the flavour of the malt.
You can really taste the difference between an unpeated malt and a heavily peated malt like Laphroaig.
This is actually still very damp.
Does that matter? You wouldn't normally burn a wet thing, would you? No, but the more moisture in the peat, the better, really.
It keeps the flames to a minimum and you get more smoke off it.
Ah, it's all about the smoke.
But, actually, the unique taste of Islay malt was a happy accident.
Yes, I think I've discovered where all the smoke goes.
Originally, peat fires were used to dry the barley grain, which is the basic whisky ingredient.
Nowadays the smoke is just used to add flavour.
And it's some flavour.
- Right, so this is the end of the process, isn't it? - Yeah, this is it.
And we're gonna be able to taste the peat in this? We should be able to, yeah.
Whoa.
I really want one of them.
- Can I smell it? - Yeah, yeah, you should.
And then I'll get some of the liquid out.
- It kind of makes your eyes water slightly.
- It's strong alcohol in there.
Probably about 55 percent.
- 55.
- Yeah.
Which is just the way I like it.
Good luck, head.
Good luck, throat.
Slàinte.
- Can you taste the peat? - Oh, you can.
You really can, can't you? Absolutely delicious.
It's quite medicinal, actually, isn't it? Well, funny you should say that.
During Prohibition we still managed to sell Laphroaig into America and you could get a prescription from your doctor for some Laphroaig medicine.
A prescription for whisky.
That's a very understanding doctor.
So, whether your bottle of peaty malt whisky is 10, 15 or 30 years old, it gets its character from a landscape scoured by glaciers 10,000 years ago.
And when you look at the Highlands themselves, you're seeing the result of violent events over billions of years.
Continents smashed together and built mountains.
The landscape has been ripped apart and torn to bits, then buried under sheets of ice.
The Highlands are where Britain began.
It's one of the oldest landscapes on the planet.
We've travelled to all four corners of Britain, and we've seen that it boasts not just some of the world's oldest landscapes, but also, for a country our size, we have the greatest variety of landscapes in the world.
And it's all down to our volatile past.
That past has left us with a countryside we both love.
The great British countryside.
We've got it all, really.
Cornwall and Devon, shaped by the tug of war between the land, the sea and the weather.
Tough, craggy, and still Britain's favourite holiday destination.
Yorkshire - incredible rock formations, carved and sculpted by massive forces of ice and water, where the folk are officially the happiest in Britain.
The South Downs - the very opposite of the Highlands, comfortable, dependable, but built on fragile, crumbly chalk that was once at the bottom of a vast ocean.
The British landscape is still changing, all the time, just very, very slowly.
Which Hugh is keen to demonstrate one last time somewhere warm.
Because even the Highlands are getting higher.
As we sit here we are moving upwards.
Well, the Highlands of Scotland are moving upwards.
- And it's down to that stuff.
- What, whisky? Ice.
It's down to ice.
Because when the Highlands of Scotland were heavily glaciated, the weight of the ice was very great.
And once that was removed, you get this thing called isostatic rebound.
- You're such a show-off.
- Yeah.
Isostatic rebound.
I can say it as often as you like.
- Say it again.
- Isostatic rebound.
Scotland is going up by two millimetres a year.
And the country is like a seesaw and southern England is going down two millimetres a year to balance it.
- It's not a lot, is it? - It's nothing to worry about.
It's barely any movement at all.
It's like 25 years, 5 centimetres.
Should we sit here for 25 years, do you think? No, we shouldn't.
- Maybe if we had lots of this we could.
- We could.
- Slàinte! - Slàinte mhath!