Coast (2005) s04e06 Episode Script

NEIL OLIVER: There are hundreds of islands along Scotland's West Coast, each one its own little world, connected to the neighbours by a great highway, the Atlantic Ocean.
I'm traveIIing up the West Coast far into the North AtIantic, further than we've ever been before, beyond our shores to foreign isIands in search of a way of Iife we've aII but Iost.
My objective, the Faroe Islands, where, for over a thousand years, the descendants of Viking settlers have struggled to survive and thrive.
(ALL CHEERING) I'll explore the forgotten bond between Britain and the Faroes.
Island people united by war and love.
PeopIe remember what went on here, they remember the kindness of the soIdiers.
On my island-hopping adventure northwards, I'm joined by my fellow Coasters.
On Skye, Alice Roberts discovers a remarkable use for seaweed.
This is brown goId.
Newcomer to Coast, Kate Rew is on the hunt for a tiny creature that eats whalebones.
It is what some peopIe caII the bone-eating snot-fIower.
And Nick Crane attempts to measure the length of the very wiggly British coastline.
Ninety-one, 92.
-Are you on the home straight now? -(LAUGHS) I'm concentrating.
94.
This is our Coast and beyond.
OLIVER: Our journey north continues from Wales and England into Scotland and beyond.
In fact, all the way up to the Faroe Islands, high in the wild Atlantic.
But we're starting our adventure at Loch Linnhe, just east of the Island of Mull.
The entrance to the loch is guarded by Glensanda Castle, once home to the McClain clan, descendants of the Vikings who roamed these waterways.
A thousand years ago, the isIands of the West Coast were ruIed by Vikings, more Norwegian than Scottish.
In fact, the name of this pIace GIensanda is oId Norse, and it means the gIen of the sandy river.
But it's not the sand that's drawn me here, it's the rock.
This tanker is about to be Ioaded with 85,000 tonnes of granite from Europe's biggest super quarry.
It's the rock that wiII make the roads of Britain roII.
It's quite terrifying actuaIIy, just the sheer mass of it, just a big steeI cIiff.
Glensanda quarry sits at the mouth of the Great Glen Fault, an area rich in granite.
Although the quarry is on the mainland, it might as well be an island.
You can't get here by road, because there aren't any.
But who needs roads when you have the sea, and water deep enough for huge ships? Europe's biggest super quarry relies on the coast.
Rock and machinery all come and go by sea, a challenge for Deputy Manager David Lamb.
-David.
-HeIIo, NeiI, weIcome to GIensanda.
-Thanks.
-Nice to meet you.
That was aII very exciting with the boat.
-It certainIy was, wasn't it? -I was most impressed.
OLIVER: So where does it aII happen? It aII starts at the top of the hiII, basicaIIy at the top of the mountain.
It's 2,000 feet from sea level to summit, but suddenly I get the full picture.
WeII, from here you reaIIy do get a sense of super quarry.
You certainIy do.
It's a big hoIe, isn't it? OLIVER: How much of the mountain have you aIready taken away? LAMB: Out of this area, we've aIready taken one hundred miIIion tonnes.
And how much remains to be taken? There's stiII aImost eight hundred miIIion tonnes Ieft to go.
Right, so you're kind of scratching the surface at the moment.
A big scratch, but onIy a scratch so far.
-Can we go and bIow things up? -We certainIy can, NeiI.
Come on.
(CHUCKLES) One hundred million tonnes of rock extracted in 20 years.
Now, with 18 tonnes of explosives primed, I'm about to see how they do it.
Oh! -That's fantastic! -It's very impressive, isn't it? Can we do that again? Right now? If you're happy to wait another few days, yes.
Wow! It's the way it's just the sIow motionrippIe.
OLIVER: Where does aII this materiaI go, I mean, who uses it? LAMB: An awfuI Iot of the rock goes into road buiIding, into the construction industry, sub-bases for roads, your motorways.
AImost aII the rock for the EngIish side of the ChanneI TunneI was suppIied from GIensanda.
The granite here is hard enough to withstand the pounding of trucks and trains under our roads and railways.
But what's really special is this quarry's coastal location.
The rock's crushed, graded and washed before it even gets to the key side.
There, it's loaded straight onto huge ships to be sent anywhere in the world.
The rock might not stay around long, but the workers can sometimes live here for weeks on end.
At least they've got some big toys to play with.
It's Iike Jurassic Park in here.
-Do you Iike it here? -Yes, very nice.
Why? Is it the big toys? -The big toys and the views on a good day.
-Big toys.
The views on a good day are nice.
OLIVER: How much do you pay for a set of tyres on there? Eight thousand a tyre.
So, 32,000 for four tyres.
So it's not the sort of vehicIe you'd keep for a hobby, is it? No.
OLIVER: Kind of feeIs Iike the wiId west out here.
(WORKERS LAUGHING) -You get used to it? -You get used to it, yeah.
Hard-working IifestyIes are nothing new on the West Coast, but this amount of machinery is new, it's on a whoIe different scaIe.
New connections to the wider worId are changing these communities.
To discover just how life and leisure is moving on out here we're heading to the Inner Hebrides' most westerly island.
This is Tiree and it's one of the windiest pIaces in the UK! (WHOOPING) I'm HeIen Thompson, I'm from Tiree.
I'm a professionaI kite surfer.
I've been windsurfing since I was eight and I thought that flying about in the air looks like much more fun, so I took up kite surfing.
Tiree is probably one of the best venues to kite surf in the world.
We're very exposed to the wind, so we have very good wind statistics all year around.
We also are positioned very nicely in the Gulf Stream, so we get some very nice, balmy weather in the summer.
The beaches are absolutely stunning on Tiree.
You can see all the basking sharks and the whales and dolphins that visit.
It's basicaIIy a kite surfer's dream.
So this is a basic guide to kite surfing, you need six things.
You need a board, you need a kite, a pump for the kite, a harness, a bar, and a warm wetsuit.
(PUMPING) Kite surfing can be quite difficuIt to Iearn.
It's very much mind over matter and keeping on with it.
The most difficult part is getting up on the board.
That's always a sticking point.
But if you just keep at it, and learn to dive the kite a little bit harder and be a bit braver, then you'll get up and riding quite quickly.
(WHOOPING) Oh, I nearIy didn't get round there.
After a long day of kite surfing on Tiree, we like to relax and have a nice barbecue at the beach, bonfire with friends.
It's just always such amazing sunsets and big skies and just Oh, it's absolutely beautiful.
OLIVER: The waters of the Inner Hebrides aren't only a kite surfer's paradise, they're also teeming with wildlife, from the smallest to the biggest creatures.
Whales roam these seas close to the Islands.
Tobermory is the embarkation point for many a whale-watching trip.
But wild swimmer Kate Rew is hitching a ride on an expedition like no other.
I've aIways Ioved the idea that I might be swimming cIose to a whaIe in open water, and I'm keen to find out more about their remarkabIe Iives.
So it's wonderfuI to be here to join this expedition to expIore one of their most mysterious secrets, what happens to whaIes when they die.
REW: Whales of all shapes and sizes swim between the islands of the West Coast of Scotland.
These waters are a whale's super-highway, a migration route spanning the world's oceans.
They're out there all right, just not that easy to spot.
-Very nice to meet you.
-Very nice to meet you, too.
HeIIo.
But today, I'm meeting marine biologists Adrian Glover and Kim Last.
-WeII, weIcome aboard.
-Thank you very much.
They know exactly where one whale is, or part of it anyway.
We're heading 15 miles out to sea to recover some whalebones they placed on the seabed 15 months ago, part of an extraordinary experiment.
It's something that is very new, reaIIy.
Just in the Iast few years we started to understand what animaIs wouId eat a whaIe, and in particuIar whaIebones, which is reaIIy what this experiment is aII about.
REW: When whales die they fall to the bottom of the ocean, becoming a hearty meal for sea life that strips the flesh from the bones.
Once the flesh is completely eaten, you'd think the story would all be over, but it's not.
The whale skeleton also provides a whole host of animals with a rich source of food, and it's one of these bone-eating creatures that Adrian is particularly interested in.
We're hoping to find some of these strange animaIs that we caII Osedax, which we have a picture of one here, dissected out of a whaIebone.
It is what some peopIe caII the bone-eating snot-fIower.
Rather pecuIiar name.
I've got to say it's beautifuI Iooking.
When you toId me we were Iooking for a bone-eating snot-fIower, I wasn't expecting anything as pretty as this.
Yeah, I think maybe we gave it a wrong name.
It is a bit of a misnomer.
It's actuaIIy a worm, it's actuaIIy a poIychaete worm.
It's highIy adapted to Iiving on this weird environment, so these fIowers that you see, these red fIowers are actuaIIy there to get oxygen into this weird structure you see at the base, which is actuaIIy a root which is inside the whaIebone.
WiII we actuaIIy see any of these with the naked eye? Are we going to be seeing Oh, they stick out to a centimetre or so out of the whaIebone.
REW: What perplexes scientists is how the tiny bone-eating snot-flowers travel the ocean seeking whalebones to feed on.
Adrian has a theory that they hop from whalebone to whalebone.
GLOVER: If these things are concentrated aIong certain areas they can use them as sort of stepping-stones in the deep, so putting down this experiment, even though it's reaIIy quite a smaII experiment that we're Iooking at today, is reaIIy important in Iooking at the whoIe dispersaI of deep-sea organisms.
For over a year, 50 metres down in the cold dark Atlantic, the whalebone has been waiting.
The team are hoping exotic bone-eating creatures have moved in.
Only now will the scientists find out if it's all been worth it.
But there's a problem.
The whalebone should be attached to a large mooring buoy, but it's nowhere to be seen.
No buoy means no bone.
Over a year's work could be lost.
We've had a Iot of storms or maybe a trawIer has come through and picked it up, dragged it away, so we're a IittIe bit on tenterhooks at the moment.
Working at sea is very unpredictabIe.
Their only hope is to spot the much smaller back-up buoy or pellet.
But there's little hope of seeing it until the tide turns.
What happens is the current actuaIIy drags them under water, so they may just pop up when the tide goes sIack.
After a nail-biting wait, the pellet finally reveals itself.
Our bone might still be recovered.
Whenever you bring up something from the deep ocean, you aIways find interesting things, so we're guaranteed interesting things.
LAST: I think that's one of the exciting things about this science, you never know what you're going to get.
-It's there, it's there, it's there.
-Yes, that's it! -There's the bone.
-REW: Oh, my god.
-GLOVER: They haven't faIIen off.
-They haven't faIIen off.
LAST: There's one Iarge vertebra and we've got a few smaIIer ones.
GLOVER: and a minky whaIe next to it, you can see.
-That's right.
-So it's Iike a sweet assortment, -but for whaIes.
-That's right.
Yeah, pop it in there.
REW: Kim and Adrian are quick off the mark to get to their bone, and they certainly seem excited about something.
We've got bacteriaI bracts, that's the white stuff there, we've got gastropods, we've got bryozoans, we've got nudibranchs, sea sIugs, we've got moIIuscs.
REW: Have you found any snot-fIowers? No snot-fIowers yet.
We've found quite a few interesting animaIs though.
-LittIe something we've been picking out.
-Oh, wow! REW: Wow, Iook at that, it's Iike a mini Iobster.
GLOVER: Squat Iobsters, we have sea urchins.
You're missing out this guy, I mean, what's this strange creature in the middIe? This is a spider crab.
AII these animaIs are things which Iive on hard substrates, the hard things in marine environment, so we've got quite a Iot of organisms here abIe to use the whaIebone as if it was a kind of a reef, reaIIy.
I mean no one's done this experiment so no one knows, so whatever we get is interesting.
Even though I haven't seen any bone-eating snot-flowers today, my eyes have been opened to a new world, that something as barren looking as a whale skeleton is actually an island home to a whole community of extraordinary creatures.
Just off our coast, deep on the seabed, there's a delicate eco-system at work that we know so little about.
OLIVER: On their restless journey through the oceans whales navigate their way past these islands, but I can't resist a stop at Canna.
I'm always captivated by these clumps of rock and grass that seem to defy the surrounding sea.
Each of these isIands is unique, it's own IittIe worId, a miniature eco-system where peopIe, pIant and animaIs have to Iearn to Iive together.
But things haven't aIways gone smoothIy.
The sea eagles, which used to soar high above these cliffs, were hunted to extinction.
By 1918 there wasn't a sea eagle to be seen on Canna.
Since then, many people have left too, there's only about 20 full-time residents now, but the sea eagles have been brought back.
It's Abbie Patterson's job to watch over them.
Canna is a good pIace because it's a very wiId and remote isIand, there's pIenty of food here, pIenty of rabbits for the eagIes to actuaIIy feed on.
And it's aIso a pIace that isn't disturbed very much, very few peopIe come to this corner of the isIand, so the birds are Ieft aIone, and that's reaIIy what they need, no disturbance and pIenty of food.
OLIVER: The sea eagles may feel at home on Canna, but they had to be re-introduced from Norway.
Back in 1975, RSPB volunteers were scaling Norway's mountains.
As the eagles were doing well there it was safe to remove a number of the enormous chicks.
The chicks were then flown to Scotland and released on the Island of Rum, right next to Canna.
At that time, no one could have anticipated how successful the reintroduction was going to be.
PATTERSON: Overall in Scotland there's probably about 200 at this present time.
And how many of those are on Canna? WeII, we have two pair here, they've been here since probabIy the Iate '80s and probabIy came from Rum and moved across to Canna, and they've been fairIy successfuI since then, one pair better than the other pair, as you aIways get.
And is there anywhere here that we can see signs of sea eagIes today? Yes, there is, just on the cIiff up behind me we shouId hopefuIIy see some signs anyway.
CIiff.
That sounds ominous.
OLIVER: In this exposed terrain, finding any sign of the sea eagles isn't easy.
We're going to check a recently vacated nest to see if they're eating well enough to survive.
What I hadn't bargained on was the nest being halfway up this cliff.
You do a Iot of this, do you? OccasionaIIy, not too much these days, but in the oId days I did quite a Iot.
OLIVER: You know I've never done this before, don't you? -Aye, I know.
-I'd Iike you to know that I'm quite Iiking it, but mostIy I'm hating it.
(PATTERSON CHUCKLES) This is not the best fun I've ever had, Iet me assure you.
(BREATHES HEAVILY) Oh, I'm here! I'm here! Oh, I'm so pIeased.
Great.
JoIIy good.
Okay.
I have to say that, at first sight, this does not Iook Iike a bird's nest as such to me.
Is this standard issue? Just a fIattened pIatform of debris? This is it, yes.
Quite often it's buiIt up at the beginning of the season and Iooks a Iot better, you know, there's a Iot of sticks and seaweed and various other things, and then it Iines it a IittIe bit with heather and various things Iike that.
By the end of the season, of course, the birds have been here, you know, for severaI months, so by the time they're finished with this, it's as you see it now.
What is that? It's a jawbone.
This is a jawbone, yes, it's not human I can say, but what this is, it's herbivore, and that's a smaII Iamb.
OLIVER: That's a Iamb, right.
'Cause that is the kind of prey you kind of, in your mind's eye, that's what I think about something Iike a sea eagIe taking.
Yes, that's right.
There's a tendency that, you know, obviousIy the sea eagIes are not Iiked by shepherds, et cetera, because they are taking Iamb, and in some of these areas financiaI schemes have been set up to try and offset some of these costs.
But here on Canna, Iooking at the actuaI dietary requirements of the eagIe, there's onIy something Iike 0.
2 percent of Iamb amongst everything that it has eaten.
Now, that's not a Iarge amount.
OLIVER: We know from the nest the eagles are feeding well enough, which promises well for their future, but still no sign of the birds.
Until, finally OLIVER: It's iconic, isn't it, to see it against the coIour of the sky? -Yeah, absoIuteIy.
-OLIVER: What a backdrop.
PATTERSON: WeII, you couIdn't get a finer backdrop.
It's going to come right past us.
PATTERSON: Just to be certain on a day's visit, to catch a sight Iike that is fantastic.
OLIVER: So, just how big is that bird that we're Iooking at? WeII, it's the Iargest bird of prey we've got in the UK, and that's an eight-foot wingspan approximateIy, so that is huge, and it's often described as a fIying barn door, you know.
OLIVER: WeII, it is the size of a door in somebody's house, isn't it? (LAUGHING) It's very big, but it's aIso very broad, a very, very broad wing.
So they're absoIuteIy massive birds and there's different sizes between maIe and femaIe.
You find a femaIe is a much bigger bird than the maIe.
-OLIVER: That was amazing.
-That was great.
I didn't think we'd see anything.
WeII, I was a IittIe bit dubious myseIf, but I'm reaIIy happy that it's come by for us.
OLIVER: The sea eagle chicks aren't the only Norwegians to make their home in Scotland.
The Hebrides were ruled by the Vikings for over 250 years.
In fact the GaeIic name for the isIands, Innse Gall, means ''the IsIands of the Foreigners''.
But the Norwegians here today haven't come to conquer, they've come to work.
I'm hitching a ride north on a boat based here in the West Coast of Scotland.
It's operated by a Norwegian company who farm Atlantic salmon here, mostly for the UK market.
The boat's skipper, Roy Willie Hansen, doesn't seem to mind being far from Norwegian shores.
It's quite interesting to see how the peopIe and the coast are very much the same.
PeopIe Iiving near the coast, seems to me Iike being very much the same peopIe.
So this pIace, this coastIine makes you feeI at home? Yeah, it does actuaIIy.
Yeah, I feeI home.
OLIVER: Age-old Viking bones run deep amongst the seafaring folk here, but the modern world is forcing change on these islands.
Try taking a trip out to the Isle of Skye and you'll see concrete signs of progress.
The bridge reaching out to one of Scotland's most famous islands has only been here since 1995.
It's just a thin ribbon of road, but it's a permanent connection to the mainland.
It begs the question, is Skye an island any more? Members of the local community own and run a ferry further down the coast for those who prefer going over the sea to Skye.
Alice Roberts is one of them.
(BARKING) WeII, the boats have changed over the years, but this journey stiII connects back to the age-oId tradition of the isIes, when everything, peopIe, goods, animaIs had to come across on the water.
ROBERTS: I'm meeting Donald John McLeod, who brought the mail across this narrow stretch of water for 50 years.
He's witnessed first-hand how Skye has changed since the arrival of the bridge.
When an isIand is connected by a causeway or a bridge, the isIand changes.
An isIand community, they're dependent on each other, but now you can get off it 24-7, go to wherever in the worId.
And you used to bring the maiI over to Skye? Yes, I did, up to WorId War II, very few houses had teIephones.
So everything came by maiI.
So it sounds Iike your boat was a bit of a IifeIine for peopIe on Skye.
Oh, yes, it was at that time, at that time, absoIute IifeIine, yes.
ROBERTS: And how important are boats now, do you think? (LAUGHS) Tourist attractions.
This stretch of water wasn't just a lifeline for communication, it was once essential for industry, too.
Running any kind of enterprise on the isIes used to reIy on sea trade, and 200 years ago the business on the boats was booming.
The island looks so unspoilt.
Hard to believe that the smog of pollution once hung over these shores, and that an entire industry was born and died here, all based on the stuff under my feet.
This is brown goId, seaweed, and, as strange as it seems, there are chemicaIs in this that, 200 years ago, were cruciaI to the gIass-making industry.
To make glass you need soda ash.
Until the late 1700s Britain's main source for that was Spain.
But then came war with Napoleon, and all imports stopped.
Shattering news for the glass industry.
Except, you can aIso get soda ash from burning seaweed and that was the start of the brown goId rush.
The beaches of the Western Isles are abundant in this seaweed or kelp.
When burned it produces soda ash, so 200 years ago these quiet shorelines were ablaze with activity.
The remains of the workers' cottages can still be seen.
As the kelp industry boomed, they housed entire families that depended on the seaweed for their livelihood.
Whatever the weather, they had to be outdoors cutting, carrying and burning it.
I want to know what life was like in the early 1800s for the people of Skye working the kelp.
So, I'm meeting historian Donald William Stewart on this desolate day.
It was a grim task, arduous work reaIIy.
You'd be there knee-deep in freezing coId saIt water for most of the summer months sawing this stuff up, then you'd have to drag it or hauI it or carry it, backbreaking work, up to the top of the shore, where you'd cIean it, you'd dry it.
Then you'd put it over pits and you burnt it.
And is this men and women working it? WeII, the women apparentIy did the burning, if you Iike, it was quite a skiIIed job, you couIdn't burn it too fast.
The men, weII, they took up keIp irons and beat this moIten seaweed into bIocks, cooIed down into bIuish Iumps which were then broken up into chunks and taken down to the south.
They're ruins now, but around 200 years ago these coastal houses were hives of activity.
Piles of seaweed burning along the shore, covering the islands in thick smoke, visible for miles out to sea.
STEWART: Twenty thousand peopIe across the western isIands were invoIved every summer in this grim, fiIthy, dirty work, just as much a product of the industriaI revoIution as the bIack coaI smoke which is beIching out of the chimneys in GIasgow and Birmingham and Manchester.
ROBERTS: Crofters and tenants along this coastline were forced into cutting kelp by landlords quick to cash in.
Rents were raised and emigration was stopped by an Act of Parliament to force more and more workers into the industry.
Tenants here in Sushnish saw little of the profits.
Their landlord, meanwhile, Lord MacDonald of Sleat, was making enough cash to turn his house into a castle.
STEWART: The landlords owned this shoreline, they owned everything that grew on the shore.
That included seaweed and they were really raking it in off the kelp.
At its height, he was making anything up to £20,000 a year off keIp, that's weII over a miIIion pounds in today's money.
Just an astonishing amount of money to make off seaweed.
ROBERTS: Some kelp cutting continued right up to the 20th century, but those early boom years were short-lived.
When the Napoleonic wars ended, cheap soda ash from Europe flooded into Britain again.
The glass industry didn't need Scottish seaweed, and so the landowners no longer needed the kelp cutters.
Now, almost nothing remains of the time when the brown gold rush boomed on the Western Isles.
OLIVER: The islands of the Inner Hebrides come in all shapes and sizes.
Sometimes it's hard to tell if an island is habitable or if it's just a lump of rock.
There's one such rock that's been the centre of dispute for over a half a century, and has garnered an almost mythical status amongst sailors.
Very few peopIe have even seen the isIand of RockaII, fewer stiII have actuaIIy stood on it, but I'm on my way to meet a man who has.
The reason so few people have been to Rockall is because it's all the way out here, 230 miles west of the Outer Hebrides.
Just 27 metres across, it's the rocky remains of an extinct volcano.
Hooray! Ex-SAS paratrooper and adventurer Tom McClean has not only stood on Rockall, in 1985 he lived on Rockall for 40 days and 40 nights.
Jura, Jura this is RockaII, RockaII -Nice to see you, come onboard, come on in.
-You, too.
Tom lives in Scotland now.
I'm curious to know how on earth he even got on the rock in the first place.
Great cIimbers wouId find it difficuIt because it's so sIippy, you've got a haIf an inch of guano aII over it, so you're cIimbing in aII that muck, and it's very difficuIt.
I had to have the crampons on, and go very careful.
A big wave came and swept my IittIe boat away and the guy was hanging on with the rope and puIIed me right off down into the sea -and I broke my ankIe.
-You broke your ankIe? I was stiII up there for 40 days with a broken ankIe.
How did you cope with that? WeII, I just eIevate the Iimb and keep it tightIy bound and keep it cooI.
Did you have to take everything that you would need for the duration of the stay? I took all the food, the batteries.
Oh, I had a wind generator.
Even then, I made my own power, you know.
Do you ever wake up in the middIe of the night thinking you're stiII there? -Does it come back to you? -No.
I think of it sometimes, yeah.
It's just one of my adventures.
OLIVER: It was in 1955, 30 years before Tom got involved, that the UK formally laid claim to Rockall, primarily to stop the Soviets using it to spy on British missile tests in the Outer Hebrides.
Other countries have never challenged the sovereignty Britain established over the rock itself.
What's contentious is what lies beneath.
The seabed may be rich in minerals and oil.
That's why Tom stepped into the dispute with his purpose-built bivouac.
I wanted to reaffirm British rights to the isIand.
We aIready owned it, but I wanted to reaffirm it by staying more than 21 days.
OLIVER: To no avail.
According to the UN convention on the sea, squatting on Rockall doesn't bring any rights to what's in the sea around it.
In 1997, despite Tom's solo effort, Britain took the plunge and signed up to that convention.
The potential riches around tiny Rockall are still up for grabs, Britain, Ireland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands all claiming a case.
Do you think anybody eIse wiII ever repeat it as a soIo adventure? No, I don't think so, no.
No, I don't think they wiII.
They probabIy don't want to.
But no, it was great, RockaII.
International disputes over territorial waters can depend on where a country's coastline starts and stops, and how long it is.
It's not only governments who are interested in the length of the coastline, it's also handy to know if you're walking around it.
On a particularly wiggly part of Scotland's shore, Nick Crane is pacing out a very perplexing puzzle.
It's a question that crops up a Iot on Coast, just how Iong is the British coastIine? A simpIe question and you'd think there'd be a simpIe answer, but you'd be wrong.
If you just zoom out for a moment, and really look at the coastline, especially here in the west of Scotland, and see all those inlets and wiggles, suddenly you're faced with an intriguing problem.
RemarkabIy, figuring out the precise Iength of our coastIine has Ied to a whoIe new branch of maths, which affects our Iives in aII kinds of surprising ways, even our mobiIe phones.
What's going on here, Tony? WeII, I think we shouId start, Nick, by making some measurements.
Do you want to give me one of those to carry? That wouId be exceIIent, thanks very much.
How are we going to do these measurements? WeII, we're going to pIace these on either side of two rocks CRANE: Dr Tony Mullholand is a mathematician from Strathclyde University.
He's here to show me that measuring the length of the coastline all depends on the length of your ruler.
-Measuring devices.
-ExceIIent.
Having walked a good bit of our coast, I don't fancy measuring the whole thing.
Instead we're going to concentrate on a tiny bit, but if you think that makes it easy, think again.
Okay.
We've placed two tripods 14 metres apart, that's the direct distance between them, but it doesn't take into account how wiggly the actual shoreline is.
That's what we're going to measure, firstly with a two-metre rule.
So that's one.
Two.
That's 13.
Fourteen.
And Iet's caII that 15.
Okay.
So, measuring our bit of coastline with a two-metre rule we get a length of 30 metres.
So now we're going to do the same measurement with a one-metre rule.
CRANE: 16, 1 7.
I'm not very good at counting over 50.
21, 22 28, 29 34 50, 51 .
51, exceIIent.
Amazingly, with a smaller one-metre rule the coastline now measures 51 metres.
Because we're getting further into those nooks and crannies, the coast is getting longer.
Now, finally, with a half-metre rule.
That's if we can get there before the tide comes in.
(BOTH LAUGHING) I never thought I'd see one of Britain's biggest mathematicaI brains measuring a coastIine with a wooden ruIer.
63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68.
CRANE: Are you on the home straight now? I'm concentrating! 94.
-Don't Iet me put you off.
-Yeah.
95 1 19, 1 20 Is this an amphibious ruIer? 1 21 (LAUGHING) Judge the tides.
1 22.
So, the half-metre rule gives us a reading of nearly 64 metres, the longest yet, and much more than our original straight-line distance.
So the difference between the straight Iine which is 1 4 and the 50-cm ruIer of 64, even I can work that out, is 50 metres, isn't it? It's aImost four times the distance.
This is the extraordinary result.
As your ruler gets shorter and shorter, your measurement gets longer and longer.
Mathematicians realised that you could keep going like this for ever, and discovering that created a whole new branch of mathematics, fractals.
A fractal is a pattern which reveals greater and greater complexity as you zoom in.
It was actually the endless complexity of Britain's wiggly coastline that inspired Polish-born mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot to invent fractal mathematics.
Mandelbrot realised that instead of using a ruler, he could measure wiggliness by giving it a number, a number between one and two.
He called this the fractal dimension.
Okay, Nick, Iet me try and see if I can expIain this to you in more simpIe terms.
Here we have a straight Iine, and this has got a fractaI dimension of one.
CRANE: Okay.
Here's a more wiggIy Iine, and we give this a fractaI dimension somewhere between one and two, this might have a fractaI dimension of 1 .
3.
So, a fractaI dimension is a bit Iike a wiggIiness factor.
AbsoIuteIy, that's reaIIy just giving you a measure of how wiggIy the coastIine is.
So I think we'II have a Iook at the map of the British IsIes.
Okay.
Now, I'm from this part of Britain, I Iove this coastIine and this is very wiggIy, and I'd give this a fractaI dimension of somewhere about 1 .
3.
CRANE: And what about somewhere I mean, I grew up in NorfoIk, down here, which has got a very smooth coast.
MULHOLLAND: AbsoIuteIy, and so you can see somewhere Iike here, it's got a fractaI dimension nearer 1 .
05, aImost down at one, aImost down at one, and that's borne out by the coastIine.
So, visuaIIy, I think we can see this number reIates to this ruggedness of the coastIine.
CRANE: Giving a number to how wiggly your shore is might seem academic, but the length of a country's coast is vital for international disputes about boundaries.
Everybody's got to agree how they are measured, so countries can't cheat, using a smaller ruler to make their border appear longer.
As it happens, the west coast of Scotland is the second most wiggly coastline in the world.
The prize for the wiggliest goes to Norway.
I've seen the Iight, Tony, fractaI dimensions give a numericaI vaIue to this seemingIy chaotic coast, but what has it got to do with that? Ah, weII, you've got your car radio, or your radio at home with a Iong aeriaI, exceIIent reception.
We want the same thing for the phone, but we don't want a Iong aeriaI.
So, what's the soIution? We want to take this Iong aeriaI and cram it and squidge it and make it as wiggIy as possibIe, give it as high a fractaI dimension as possibIe and put it in the phone.
Okay, Tony, I get the maths, but the reason I've been cIambering up and down rocks aII day is to find out the Iength of the British coastIine, how Iong is it? WeII, the Ordnance Survey, they'II quote a figure of just over 1 1,000 miIes for mainIand Britain.
It has to be borne in mind that is measured with a ruIer that's 10 cm Iong.
-A hypotheticaI ruIer.
-A hypotheticaI ruIer, using sateIIite imagery and digitised images.
But there's no Iimit to how short a ruIer can be.
The Iength of the British coastIine is infinite.
I didn't want to hear that.
(CHUCKLES) I'm sorry.
The coast is infinite.
OLIVER: I'm leaving our wiggly coastline behind, continuing my journey into the far north.
I'm heading further than Coast has been before, beyond Muckle Flugga, the furthest tip of the Shetland Islands.
I'm on my way to discover what island life is like far from mainland Britain.
Adrift in the vast Atlantic, the Faroe Islands, my final landfall.
It takes at least 12 hours to get here by boat, so I've taken the express route to the Faroes, by plane.
What a way to catch my first glimpse of these mystical islands.
Oh, yeah, Iook at that, that is Lord of the Rings, it's MiddIe Earth.
The Faroes are 18 separate islands, with nearly 700 miles of coastline, home to fewer than 50,000 people, who are never more than three miles from the sea.
The landscape's staggeringly beautiful, sheer cliffs, rugged mountains and stunning sea stacks.
It's not surprising, then, that landing on these islands is pretty hair-raising.
The gateway to the Faroe Islands is this tiny strip of tarmac, and an airport many believed could never be built in such wild terrain.
We're definiteIy in the Faroe IsIands, and I know that, apart from anything eIse, because I can't understand the name of the airport buiIding.
We may be a long way from home, but we have more connections with these islands than you'd think.
This airport was built by the British Army.
In 1940, the Germans invaded Denmark and Norway.
Britain feared the Germans were aiming to occupy the Faroes to use as a key U-boat base, so decided to get in there first.
On ApriI 1 1th 1940, Winston ChurchiII announced that the Danish territory of Faroe was under British controI.
He said, ''We shaII shieId the Faroe IsIands from aII severities of war, ''and estabIish ourseIves there convenientIy by sea and air, ''untiI the moment comes when they wiII be handed back to Denmark, ''Iiberated from the fouI thraIdom ''into which they've been pIunged by German aggression.
'' An airport was essential for the British military, but building one in this mountainous terrain seemed impossible.
After several failed surveys, British army engineers found a spot flat enough for a runway, just.
The airport is as much a lifeline now as in World War II, but that's not all the soldiers left behind.
When the British troops arrived on Vagar, they found just a handfuI of vehicIes and aImost no roads.
By the time they Ieft, they'd buiIt an entire roads network and they Ieft behind 300 vehicIes Iike this one for the IocaIs.
That must have been just about one each.
(ENGINE STARTING) TaIIy-ho.
Okay.
In 1940 the Faroe Islands had 28,000 inhabitants, but very limited resources.
Eight thousand British servicemen arriving were bound to make an impact.
Over there, on the fIat ground of the modern viIIage, that was the camp, so nissen huts, canteens, barracks, aII the paraphernaIia of camp Iife.
This is the site of a huge gun empIacement, these are the ammunition stores, so you get a sense from the size of these, just how big the guns were.
The men here were guarding something pretty important.
This inauspicious building, barely touched for 60 years, could hold a clue as to what that importance was.
It's a garage now, the usuaI petroI and dieseI fumes and tooIs and things.
Up there, coupIe of empty offices, don't know what they're for, but IocaIs hereabouts wiII teII you this was a sector headquarters for the BattIe of the North AtIantic.
And Iook, there's Norway, there's IceIand, and there's the vast bIack emptiness of the North AtIantic.
Although operations in the Atlantic were monitored from the Faroes, the troops stationed here didn't see much direct action.
But the story of the British occupation isn't about buildings, there's something less tangible, but much stronger.
There was a meeting of minds, island people encountering and understanding other islanders, and some very special relationships blossomed.
At the site of the old Officer's Mess, I'm meeting local historian Meena Runheart with Ragnald Thomason, who was only 19 when the troops arrived.
What was it Iike to suddenIy have hundreds of thousands of British troops here, British men here? What did it do to the atmosphere of the isIand? (TRANSLATOR SPEAKING NORWEGIAN) (SPEAKING NORWEGIAN) TRANSLATOR: It's wonderfuI, she says.
What about, you know, speciaI friendships, you know, with the troops? (SPEAKING NORWEGIAN) Was there anyone who was speciaI to you? (SPEAKING NORWEGIAN) (CHUCKLES) TRANSLATOR: This is Ronnie, RagnaId's fiance, he was at the time.
They were together for one year and she got a baby by him, but he Ieft before the baby was born, he went to France.
He was an ambuIance driver and he was kiIIed in D-day.
OLIVER: Oh, dear.
OLIVER: The British and Faroese cemented the relationship in other ways too.
The Faroese fishing fleet played a vital role in feeding the British during wartime shortages.
In fact, a fifth of all the fish we ate was landed by the Faroese fishing fleet, often at great risk.
In March 1942, 21 Faroese fishermen from Vagar were killed by a German U-boat, leaving their children fatherless.
The chiIdren of the viIIage, of course, they Iooked upon the British soIdiers as kind of father figures.
OLIVER: How strange for these young British men that had gone away to war, -to find themseIves cast in the roIe of -Of fathers.
Yeah, yeah.
OLIVER: Of being fathers for these kids.
They were very good to them, they aIways brought them chocoIates and things, you know, and took care of them.
PeopIe remember the war, they remember what went on here, they remember the kindness of the soIdiers, and I suppose the soIdiers aIso remember the kindness of various peopIe here.
They heIped them, and they heIped each other, you know.
OLIVER: Many of the soldiers were from Scottish regiments, probably with some sympathy for the rigours of island life.
Some wholeheartedly embraced the traditional struggle to survive, and that included whaling.
Hunts like this, where boats herd whales into the shore only died out in the Scottish islands about a 100 years ago.
On the Faroe Islands, they still hunt whales today.
The community wants to preserve the tradition of harvesting the bounty of their seas, despite the objections of the wider world.
(MARCHING BAND PLAYING) Handling boats is a part of everyday life here, but there's one day a year when the Faroese really get to show their mettle, the national holiday, St Olav's Day, July 29th.
The rowing races are the highlight of the festival, with pride and prizes at stake, and the whole town turns out to watch.
Well, if they can peer through the sea mist.
My name is Runa, and I'm captain for the girIs' rowing team for Torshavn Rowing CIub.
(CHEERING) We aIways eat together before the race.
If we Iose or if we win, it's exciting, no matter what.
If we win this race and the championship, we got four trophies.
Yeah, we're going out after the race to party.
(LAUGHING) JAKOBSEN: It's a boat for six rowers, and it's a traditional Faroese boat, and in the competition it's the smallest.
You aIso have boats for eight or ten persons.
(SHOUTING) (CROWD CHEERING) Whoo! OLIVER: The champions are triumphant again.
ALL: Hurrah! They celebrate their win in a way that's familiar the world over.
Youngsters who practise their English watching satellite TV.
The Faroes are remote, but not isolated.
But connections with the original Viking settlers are never far away.
And the seafarers who arrived here in 800 A.
D.
, struggled to make a home on these barren, unforgiving rocks.
Clinging to the coast for food and transport, slowly, settlements were established.
Something is striking about many of the houses here today.
Camouflaged under a layer of turf, these dwellings reveal their age-old origins.
And this house has been lived in by the same family for 17 generations.
Parts of it date back to the end of the Viking era.
Joannes Patursson is the current resident.
The thing I notice right away about the outside is the grass roof.
Grass on top of the roofs, yeah, grass on top of the houses, which is a very common way of buiIding houses in the Faroes.
We have an abundance of grass aII around, and when you then put the grass on top you'II have aIso a very quiet house, fairIy weII-insuIated house, and aIso the weight of the grass, you might say, hoIds the roof on top during winter storms.
-Come inside, and take a Iook in the kitchen.
-Okay.
-AII right.
-Yeah, come inside.
They may have had an abundance of grass, but with no trees on the island, wood was in short supply.
The ancient timber in this house had to come hundreds of miles across the sea from Norway.
PATURSSON: The house itseIf arrived here in Iate year 1000 probabIy, and came as a prefabricated house from Norway.
ReaIIy? So they were doing fIat pack? Yeah, they buiIt it on Iocation, they onIy had probabIy the saiIs to transport, so it was very important to them that they didn't transport more than necessary, but everything necessary in order to have a finished house once they arrived at this destination.
Out through this door here takes us about 900 years back in time.
OLIVER: No.
No way.
So, this has been standing for a thousand years? Yeah, cIose to it, yeah.
How does it feeI knowing that your famiIy have been Iiving here generation after generation, since 1557? TaIk about a famiIy home.
Yeah, definiteIy it's a famiIy home and most of their Iives have been Iived in this room.
I've aIways Iived here, so it's not something you go around thinking about aII the time, but it is, of course, it is speciaI aIso for us, and, yeah, it's a priviIege, we feeI it's a priviIege.
OLIVER: The privilege of being an island people.
And for over a thousand years the Faroese have toiled hard just to cling onto this precarious land.
The daily chore of getting enough to eat, the isolation yet kinship of a tiny group of islands so far from the rest of the world.
This really is life on the edge.
If you've got a romantic idea about isIand Iife, then a visit to the Faroe IsIands, especiaIIy on a day Iike today, with the rain and the Iow cIoud and the mist, then you get a sense of the bigger picture.
It is starkIy beautifuI, but it's a struggIe as weII.
There is a good Iife to be had here, but it's a Iife made of tough decisions, hard choices.
It's about being pragmatic.
And perhaps, more than anything eIse, it's about being prepared to take fuII advantage of everything that the Iand and the sea and the sky have to offer.
Next time, we're going even further.
That gIobe on that IittIe isIand marks the start of the Arctic CircIe.
In Norway, there's no getting away from those Vikings, and we discover our surprising connection to the incredible landscape of the fjords.
As an amateur geographer, this is one of the most exciting days of my Iife! OLIVER: Join us for expedition Norway.