Great British Railway Journeys (2010) s02e22 Episode Script

In 1840, one man transformed travel in Britain.
His name was George Bradshaw, and his railway guides inspired the Victorians to take to the tracks.
Stop by stop, he told them where to travel, what to see and where to stay.
Now, 170 years later, I'm making a series of journeys across the length and breadth of the country to see what of Bradshaw's Britain remains.
Over the next few days I'll be travelling along a railway route that's been described as the most scenic in Britain, through the West Highlands to the Isle of Skye.
This part of my journey begins in one of the most heavily populated parts of Scotland.
But it's also the route that points towards the Highlands and Islands.
Bradshaw's Guide anticipates "a succession of beautiful and varied scenery," and remarks that, "Any traveller for pleasure has only to choose the first conveyance westward to find what he seeks and be gratified.
" It's a line that brought thousands of tourists to these mountains for the first time.
My "Bradshaw's Guide" helped them find their feet in this unknown territory.
On today's leg of the journey, I'll be discovering how Queen Victoria attracted trainloads of tourists to Loch Lomond This is very valuable.
I can see it's signed by Victoria.
That's a real treasure that you've got that.
finding out how Scottish timber fuelled the rail boom We have fast-growing trees for things like railway sleepers.
That was one of the big demands in the 19th century.
and learning how a great sailing ship took her name from a witch in a poem.
It comes from a Burns poem, Tam o' Shanter.
He can't help himself and he jumps up and shouts, "Weel done, Cutty-sark! I started this journey in Ayr.
Now I'm moving north towards the Highlands.
I'll be taking the picturesque West Highland Line, travelling through rugged moor and mountain all the way to the Inner Hebrides and the Isle of Skye.
On this stretch I'll visit the former shipyards in Dumbarton and reach the shores of Loch Lomond at Tarbet as I head for the villages Crianlarich and Tyndrum.
I'm beginning in the Clyde Estuary, once the centre of Scotland's shipbuilding industry.
The Industrial Revolution made many fortunes along the River Clyde.
But it also produced an enormous transformation of the landscape, maybe emphasising the differences between Lowland Scotland and the Highlands, where I shall be headed shortly.
But now, as you move along the Clyde, what's most in evidence are the effects of de-industrialisation as some of the trades and crafts of the 19th century are wound up.
One town, changed beyond recognition since Bradshaw's day, is my next stop, Dumbarton.
Back then, busy workshops lined the quays.
Mighty vessels took shape in the shipyards.
Bradshaw's Guide says, "Dumbarton is built in a level tract of country near the confluence of the River Leven and the Clyde.
" I can see behind me the very point where the two rivers meet.
It says, "It also has the advantage of possessing a spacious and convenient harbour.
" That strikes me as pretty sad because I'm on the site of what was once Denny's Shipyard.
And there's nothing left.
I can hardly believe it.
In Bradshaw's time, Denny's was just one of several shipyards that occupied the banks of the river.
In the 19th century, the railways helped the yards to expand, bringing coal and metals to the slipways.
By the early 20th century, one in five of the world's ships was built on the Clyde.
Bruce, good morning.
I'm meeting Bruce Biddulph, whose family worked in the shipbuilding trade.
Is this really the site that was once Denny's Shipyard? This is it.
It stretched from the rock over there right along the river to just before that tower and you had three or four slipways here.
The reason they could build the ships so big here was because they launched them down this river into the Clyde.
I came here today by train, but there's no sign of railway lines.
Were there railway lines? Yes.
There were two lines off the main line into the Macmillan yard and into Denny's to supply materials.
They were big concerns.
A central part of the process, to get the steel in and so on.
Very much so.
Although the Clyde was well known for producing steamships, Dumbarton's shipyards also built one of the world's most famous sailing ships, the Cutty Sark.
She was launched right here in 1869.
This is a bit puzzling for me.
Why build a sailing ship at the end of the 19th century? In part it was prejudice on the ship owner's part.
They didn't trust steam entirely.
Apart from that, prior to the Suez Canal opening, the sailing ship was actually more reliable going round the Cape in Africa on the Indian and Chinese trades.
It's a bit like now with electric cars.
We can build them but we don't have the facilities to look after them.
And in those days it was much the same idea.
A lack of engineers and facilities if the ship broke down, so sailing ships were still viable in those days.
The Cutty Sark was a new type of composite sailing ship.
She had an iron frame and a wooden hull.
On the trade routes to Australia she was even faster than the best steamships.
She was originally commissioned by a Scottish entrepreneur who gave her her unusual name.
I've never understood what Cutty Sark means.
Where did the name come from? It comes from a Burns poem.
Tam o' Shanter.
Tam gets drunk one night, and he sees the witches and the devil having a bit of a cavort and he spots one young witch who is rather pretty.
She's dressed immaculately in white.
He's captivated by her.
He can't help himself and jumps up and shouts, "Weel done, Cutty-sark".
And Cutty-sark refers to the white shift that she's wearing.
You can imagine a large sailing ship covered in sail, then she just looks like a white shirt on the sea.
Denny's shipyard continued to produce innovative ships right up until the 1960s.
But increasing competition from abroad finally forced it to close.
One part of Dumbarton at least hasn't changed since Bradshaw's day.
My guidebook says, "The ancient castle of Dumbarton stands on the summit of a high and precipitous two-headed rock and is a place of great antiquity.
" If Bradshaw returned, perhaps only the sight of the great fortress securing the harbour would convince him that he was in Dumbarton.
While in Dumbarton, which has lost its industries, I felt that sense of pride, of once what was achieved here.
And now I'm on my way to Loch Lomond, a place which fortunately has never been overdeveloped and which remains one of the gems of Scotland.
Now I'm properly embarked on the West Highland Line.
All the way along the route, we get these fantastic views of sea and loch and mountain.
It really is one of the most striking railway journeys in the world and a fantastic piece of Victorian engineering.
My "Bradshaw's" warns me to look out for my next destination.
"Five miles to the northwest of Dumbarton, the traveller from the south obtains the first view of the celebrated Loch Lomond, the most beautiful and picturesque of all the Scottish lakes.
" I'm getting off at the lochside station of Tarbet to explore one of the sites best loved by Victorian tourists.
All along the West Highland Line, the stations are beautifully kept and wonderfully set.
Tarbet had the advantage of having not only a railway station, but also a steamship pier.
It soon became a favourite with Queen Victoria herself.
Before the railways, only affluent tourists could afford to visit the remote Scottish Highlands.
Thereafter, the middle classes could follow in the footsteps of Queen Victoria by taking the train to Loch Lomond for holidays or day trips.
Bradshaw's Guide is incredibly enthusiastic about Loch Lomond.
On a day like today you can see exactly why.
"Loch Lomond is justly considered one of the finest lakes in Scotland.
" "A lake of incomparable beauty, as in its dimensions, exceeding all others in variety as it does in extent and splendour.
" Then Bradshaw's gives you practical tips.
"Steamers up and down Loch Lomond daily in the summer call at Tarbet and Inversnaid, the landing places for Inveraray, Loch Katrine and the Trossachs.
" It's for Inversnaid that I am now bound.
Queen Victoria is known to have explored the loch on steam cruisers and a boat still provides the best means to appreciate this extraordinary lake.
I first got to know Loch Lomond very recently, just a few weeks ago.
I came here on holiday.
I was astonished by it.
I'd heard the name very often, but I didn't realise it was 23 miles long.
I wasn't prepared for the size.
It's so beautiful, it's so green and so wonderfully unspoilt.
I'm landing at the Inversnaid Hotel, where in the 19th century coaches took tourists on to the wilder reaches of the lock shores.
I'm here to learn why this part of her kingdom captured Queen Victoria's heart.
Hello, ladies.
I'm Michael.
Mary Haggerty and Heather Mc Tavish are lifelong local residents.
- Queen Victoria herself came here.
- Queen Victoria visited here.
She probably visited on more than one occasion.
I was told that after Prince Albert died, she and Albert had bought Balmoral, that she didn't like to go to Balmoral for a while because it had such painful memories and therefore she used to come here.
She went into deep mourning after Prince Albert died, but also her daughter married the Duke of Argyll which brought her to this area.
This would always have been sort of near to her heart.
Victoria's husband, Albert, died suddenly in 1861 and the Queen never ceased to grieve.
Astonishingly, Heather has what appears to be an original document underlining the depth of Victoria's sorrow.
My father was a Victorian and lived all his life here in these parts.
I found this letter just amongst papers.
Goodness.
This is very valuable.
I can see it's signed by Victoria and is dated June 22nd, 1884.
"I am anxious to express to all the women of Great Britain and Ireland how deeply touched and grateful I am by their very kind and generous present of the statue of my beloved husband.
" That's a real treasure that you've got that.
It tells you That's years after the death of Albert and still very touched by anything that has to do with his memory.
I had a very Victorian father.
You have this tremendous connection with the Victorian world.
He was 63 when I was born.
I'm 79 now so this goes a long way back.
Heather's father was born around the time that my "Bradshaw's Guide" was written, but he didn't share Bradshaw's enthusiasm for the railways.
Your father made a speech.
He talked about the coming of the railway and he was rather negative about it.
He talked about 1,000 men being employed to build it.
And that four policemen had their hands full on a Saturday night.
The navvies were getting drunk on a Saturday night.
But he said that when the railway was finished, so was old Arrochar.
- "We were no longer.
" - That's right.
Yes.
Although Heather's father believed the railways changed his community for the worse, others saw the benefits that the trains could bring.
They got their provisions.
Their papers.
Their post was dropped off by the trains.
Children went to school.
The train would stop and they would climb up the ladder and get dropped off at night.
The railway made its own community.
It changed but I would say it did open up the villages.
I've loved this afternoon spent on the shores of Loch Lomond.
But now it's time to cross the water back to Tarbet to find my bed for the night.
- Hello, Jenny.
- Hello.
This time I'm catching a lift with Ranger team leader Jenny Rogers.
- Put one of these on.
- Thank you very much.
- Right.
Thank you.
- Ready to go.
Her patrol boat is full of kit for monitoring this remarkable lake.
So, this is about roughly the deepest part.
- We're at about 610 feet.
- That's your depth meter.
It's about as deep as it gets.
Its deepest point is 190 metres deep, which is as deep as the North Sea in the deepest parts.
Really? You can get three Nelson's Columns or the Eiffel Tower with the top peeking out.
Despite this enormous depth, no monster.
No monster that we've seen, no.
We'll leave that to Loch Ness.
Jenny is dropping me off right outside my hotel.
- Bye-bye.
- Thanks, then.
The Tarbet Hotel started life as a coaching inn.
In the 19th century it underwent a huge expansion to accommodate the new influx of travellers.
Hello.
- Good afternoon.
- Michael Portillo checking in.
- Good afternoon, sir.
- Nice to see you.
Bye.
My "Bradshaw's Guide" recommends it as "the finest and most commodious on the lake".
Good morning.
Come on in.
As you can see, I have a pretty good vista here over trees and mountains.
But if you want a panorama of the loch, you have to come into the bathroom.
Now just look at that.
Isn't that fantastic? A loo with a view.
For the rest of this Scottish journey, I shan't be able to use the 1860s "Bradshaw's" that I usually rely on because the line I'm following was built only in the 1890s.
So I've picked up a later edition to guide me as I continue north from Tarbet to Crianlarich.
As the train approached I could hear it powering up the steep gradients into the station.
I can't disguise my excitement about the West Highland Line.
Before this was built, many of these places were accessible only by horse, by mail coach, possibly by steamer.
The West Highland Line brought together all these communities and made the splendours of Scotland accessible to all the country.
Imagine the task of building this line up steep gradients, through the mountains and across Rannoch Moor.
What an achievement.
Work began on the West Highland Line in 1889.
It was one of the most challenging railways to build, through some of the most rugged terrain in Britain.
This stretch skirts the western shore of the loch and travels through ancient Scottish woodland.
The trees I'm passing now are like a traditional Scottish forest.
I'm seeing a lot of oak trees, the occasional Caledonian pine.
Of course, now they block the view.
In Victorian times, there wouldn't be many trees here and very often the steam trains caused fires, so there were forest fires and the view would have been better.
On the other hand, along the railway line now, there's the opportunity for the forests to take root, for the traditional forest to re-establish itself.
My next stop is Crianlarich, once a great transport hub for the timber trade.
Until recently passenger services shared this line with logging trains, moving south from the local stations to the sawmills.
- Bye-bye now.
- Take care.
Enjoy your trip.
Thank you.
Wow.
The scenery just gets better and better the further north you go.
The view is superb, but very different from what Victorian visitors would have seen.
By Bradshaw's day, these hills had been stripped of their native forest by centuries of tree felling and grazing.
Now they're dotted with large conifer plantations, which have changed the landscape once again.
How are you? - You're walking the West Highland Way? - Yes.
What do you think of the landscape you've seen so far? It's beautiful.
From Loch Lomond The first couple of days aren't anything to write home about but Loch Lomond to here is brilliant.
- It's worth it.
- There's a lot of plantation.
These are not indigenous trees.
Do you think that's a problem? It is across Scotland.
They don't look as nice and they're not nice to walk through because they're too dense.
But some of the woodland that is more native has been really nice.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Good luck.
I'm not a big fan of Scotland's conifer plantations either.
I'm keen to find out how they've spread through the Highlands since Bradshaw's era.
- Mairi, good morning.
- Good morning.
Mairi Stewart is a woodland historian.
Looking across the loch, the trees I'm looking at by the water's edge, that would be the traditional, the indigenous tree for Scotland.
- The native woods, yes.
- What trees are they? Mainly birch.
But there's oak and hazel and some rowan and willow.
Higher up the slope I'm seeing what I imagine is a commercial plantation of timber.
That is commercial sitka spruce plantation, planted probably sometime in the second half of the 20th century.
I don't like those very much.
They spoil the landscape.
But in many periods of our history, we've needed timber very badly.
Absolutely.
Up until the 19th century it was terribly important.
Everything, housing, utensils for farming.
Saddles were made of timber.
Everything you can think about, which we wouldn't regard as being made of timber today was required for life in Scotland in the past.
By the end of the 19th century, all this activity had reduced Scotland's forests to an all-time low.
But landowners found a possible solution.
The new conifers that were brought in in 18th and 19th century became the tree of commercial timber exploitation.
We have fast-growing trees for things like railway sleepers.
That was one of the big demands in the 19th century.
As industrialisation accelerated, even these new plantations couldn't keep pace with the demand for wood.
Then in 1914, war brought even greater needs.
Everything required timber.
The crates that took biscuits to the troops in the trenches.
The trenches themselves.
Even airplanes were made of timber.
It was a real crisis for Britain.
The country needed a reliable source of home-grown wood.
In 1919, the Forestry Commission was set up and rows of conifers were planted across Scotland.
It was the start of a new timber industry that until recently exported logs along the line from Crianlarich.
Sadly, the timber trains are no more, but luckily for me, passengers still travel from here.
Before my next train, I'm checking out the station tearoom.
I've heard they run a special service for hungry travellers that's been on offer for over 100 years.
Hello.
Good morning.
I wondered if you could show me your ancient food orders.
- Of course.
- Where? Oh, here.
Here they are.
These are obviously telegrams that have been sent up from Glasgow.
They're dated 1901.
They're way over 100 years old.
This is the well-to-do from Glasgow coming up, ordering their breakfast, packed lunches, whatever.
What does that say? "Tea, ham and eggs etc.
" These have come up by Morse code and had to be translated.
Breakfast for two and then it specifies exactly what they want.
- There's nothing new under the sun.
- No.
People still do the same thing.
This morning we had a telephone call about ten minutes before the train comes in from the previous station saying, "Can we please have two bacon rolls when we arrive and a coffee?" It's ready for them, because the train stops long enough to get the token to go to the next station.
I should've called ahead because now there's no time for a bacon sandwich as I have a train to catch.
I'm going only five miles up the track to Tyndrum.
As I approach the village, I'm at the gateway to Scotland's famous Grampian mountains.
Now approaching Tyndrum Lower.
Tyndrum Lower your next station stop.
So this is Tyndrum Lower Station.
My Bradshaw's Guide is ecstatic about the mountains.
"Where the Grampians first rise for almost the whole breadth of the country, the high grounds are penetrated by straths and glens of considerable extent, each traversed by its own streams and diversified by numerous lakes.
" "Several of the mountains in this district are upwards of 3,000 feet high.
" Which, of course, is the definition of a Munro.
Scotland's Munros get their name from a man cut from the same cloth as George Bradshaw.
In 1891, Sir Hugo Munro carefully listed 283 peaks over 3,000 feet.
To this day, keen climbers proudly bag them one by one.
A bit strenuous for me.
I've come to Tyndrum intrigued by plans to revive an activity that hit the headlines in Bradshaw's time.
Gold mining.
Chris.
Good to see you.
Mining engineer Chris Sangster believes there could be as much as five tons of gold hidden in Tyndrum's hills.
Five tons of gold is worth a bob or two, I imagine.
Between 150 and 200 million dollars at the moment, depending on gold price.
- It's a significant deposit.
- Worth getting up in the morning for.
Oh, indeed.
Indeed.
In 1869, Scotland had its very own short-lived gold rush.
600 hopeful adventurers descended on Helmsdale.
But it was all over within a year.
Attempts were made to revive gold mining here in the 1980s.
But then the gold price was too low to make it viable.
The gold is found in a seam of quartz.
But it's not easy to see.
The gold occurs as very fine particles.
90 percent of it is less than 0.
1 of a millimetre, so you don't see gold underground here or very rarely.
It doesn't just come out as lovely chunks of gold.
You have to do something to it.
I wish it did, but that's a bit of an urban myth.
To extract gold from the rock, miners first hew it out in big chunks and then grind it into a fine powder.
When you start taking the rock out, how much gold will you find inside? In a ton of the vein material, we got ten grams a ton of gold.
That equates to about one wedding ring or more than one wedding ring in a ton of rock.
To mine our five tons of gold that we have here, we'll have to move half a million tons of rock.
It's a massive effort to produce small quantities of gold.
But if Chris succeeds, there's a chance that the West Highland Line could one day be hauling treasure from these mountains.
I've been overwhelmed on my journey today by the beauty of the Highlands and struck by how important the railway is in connecting remote communities.
But as my trip to Dumbarton reminded me, people need jobs, and whilst tourism is very, very big in the Highlands, other industries are needed, too.
Timber is one of them.
And maybe gold mines will be part of the future.
On my next journey I'll be discovering how Victorian railway engineers conquered Britain's most desolate wilderness The bogs on the moor sucked everything up that the engineers laid.
Part of the railway you see here north of the station has been floated on brushwood and turf.
visiting a shooting estate favoured by the political elite These guys, they were tough.
There was a whole cult, of course, among many of these people of being tough.
Deerstalking was part of that.
and learning how the railways helped to make whisky world famous.
This is from pretty much the exact time of the railways arriving in Oban.
I can see the railway here.
Here's a train puffing along.
That would be one of the first pictures of the railway.