All language subtitles for Scotland from the Sky Series 2 3of3 BBC 1080p_ENG_Subtitles01

Scotland is one of
the most beautiful,

most photographed
countries in the world.

Wow. Look at that rainbow.

That's spectacular.

It's a place that seems
shaped to be seen from the sky.

Oh, yes. Look at that.

Pictures taken from above
have the power to astound

and to amaze.

The view from above isn't just about
spectacular mountains

and dramatic castles...

..the view from above

offers a whole new way of
understanding our history.

I'm James Crawford,

and I want aerial photography
to take you on a journey.

I'll be using everything
from fascinating old imagery

to modern aerial footage
to uncover the secrets of our past.

In this film, we'll be
looking down on the history

of Scotland's industry...

..using the view from above
to uncover where we worked...

..and the remarkable things
we built.

I'll be taking to the skies,
hunting down traces of the past...

That is Scotland's
very first motorway.

..exploring the places we've lost.

I enjoyed it.
It was a filthy, dirty hole...

I'm following in
the footsteps of my father

to Shetland and the oil boom.

And there we are.
Me on my dad's shoulder.

This is the story of Scotland's
industry, told from the sky.

Think of the words
"Scotland" and "industry".

You'd picture grimy cities...

..mines, mills and railways.

You probably wouldn't picture
a beautiful boat trip

on the west coast of Scotland.

Just south of Oban,
there's a whole network of islands.

I've headed off from Cuan Sound
to one of the smallest - Belnahua.

Traces of Scottish industry
can be found in the most remote,

most inaccessible places.

That's why I'm making
a commando-style landing

on this forgotten island
with a fascinating story.

Welcome to
the island of Belnahua.

Population...

..me.

It's a genuinely eerie place.

The rusting machinery
and ruined buildings

point to Belnahua's
industrial past...

..and to a work that changed
the entire island forever.

To understand what happened here,
what industry did to this island,

it helps enormously
to see it from the sky.

The island of Belnahua
has been hollowed out.

These were once massive quarries
over 60 feet deep,

but now flooded by the sea...

..dug away
for one bustling business.

That business was
the production of this - slate.

Quarrying slate was hard manual
labour and frequently dangerous.

The local product had these
distinctive flecks of fool's gold.

And for every single piece of slate
produced,

nine imperfect ones
were left behind.

Those rejects can be found today
scattered all across the island.

At the industry's peak
at the end of the 19th century,

this tiny island
was home to over 200 people.

Fiona Cruickshank's great-aunt
worked here

in the schoolroom,
unused now for over a century.

She was the classroom assistant
on Belnahua and she would come over.

My gran used to tell us
this story of her,

and she would talk about
auntie Polly being here

and playing the piano
for the children.

What were conditions like here?

It must have been
very dangerous, actually,

because you're living so close to
the quarries and, you know,

heavy machinery - very noisy -
must have been pretty grim.

Slate dust is not nice.
It's horrible.

It gets into your skin

and washing your clothes
was really difficult

for the folk around here
because there was a lack of water.

Although the quarries were
flooding with sea water,

fresh water itself was
difficult to get hold of.

So the women used to get in the boat
once a week

and go way down to Lunga,
do their washing,

dry their clothes on the heather

and then they would come back
on the next tide...

Would bring it back to get filthy...
To get filthy again, yeah.

The gold flecked slate of Belnahua
adorns great buildings.

Scottish castles.

It was used as far away as
Nova Scotia.

The industry continued from
as long ago as the 17th century

to the early 1900s.

But by 1920, the sea had broken
into the deep quarries

and flooded them,
making them useless.

The slate industry was ending.

Today, the workers cottages
still stand in neat rows,

ironically without
their slate roofs.

With some sites,
it's hard to get an idea.

You've got to work at
thinking of what life was like.

This isn't one of them.
It's like a ghost town.

It's like the people just packed
up their stuff, their goods,

their gear, got on a boat
and left everything behind them.

You can imagine the noise,
the smells, the sound.

It's all here, crumbling slowly
back into the island.

From the air, Belnahua's story
becomes starkly clear.

How this remote place
provided the natural resource

that supported a whole community.

But, also, how industry
never stands still.

It uses what it can then moves on.

And as it is for
this one tiny island,

so it is for
the rest of our country.

I've become fascinated by
the power of the view from above

to reveal how
the remains of industry

are still scattered
all around Scotland.

Ten years ago,

I came to work here in the archives
of Historic Environment Scotland.

What caught my eye
more than anything else

were these - aerial photographs.

These vaults hold
some 1.6 million photos

going from the beginning of
the 20th century

all the way up to the present day.

From up high,
Scotland's transformed.

You can read the landscape itself,

see how we've written on it
again and again.

Our industry has always
relied on good transport links,

be it by sea or land.

And aerial photos reveal

how the road network
has developed over time.

From drovers' tracks...

..to General Wade's roads
of the 18th century...

..to motorway junctions
outside Glasgow.

But now I'm going in search of
Scotland's very first main road.

I'm calling on a favour from
my old friend William MacInnes

to hunt down this ancient highway.

He's arranged to pick me up
at an airstrip near Edinburgh,

in his handsome Tiger Moth.

So, William, we're about to
use a 70-year-old aircraft

to try and find
a 2,000-year-old road.

Do you fancy our chances?

Yes, I think we've got
a pretty good chance.

An old aircraft like this
doesn't travel very fast

so we'll have plenty of time
to look out over the cockpit window.

And how are the flying conditions
looking today?

The flying conditions today
are excellent.

What I'm really pleased about is

the day's only going to get better.

The winds are light, and I think

we should have a fairly free,
smooth ride across the Lammermoors.

But at 2,000ft,
it's going to be cold.

It's going to be very cold.
So I've got all my thermals on.

I see you have as well.

So, yeah, that's going to be
important.

Going up in a vintage biplane
is wonderful and terrifying

all at the same time...

Shoulder one. ..but to me it's
really the best way to see history

brought to life...

..the closest
you'll come to time travel.

We'll be heading south towards
the Borders in search of our road.

All right, Jamie. You ready?
I'm ready, yeah. Let's go. Let's go.

From up here, the views are
truly awe-inspiring.

That is beautiful.
Oh, just spectacular.

Oh, there's so much pattern
in the...

..in the fields and everything.

It's amazing. Yeah.

We're looking for the remains
of a road called Dere Street,

constructed by the Romans
2,000 years ago.

But, really, it's no street.

It ran from the city of York
northwards.

Built decades before Hadrian's Wall
and the Antonine Wall.

200 miles long and the first
and only main road into Scotland.

You'd imagine a route this old
would have disappeared completely

but just east of Jedburgh,
we finally spot some faint traces.

I'll just do
a little orbit round here.

So I think that's Dere Street
underneath us. Yeah, it is. It is.

OK, I'm just going to gently
turn around to the right.

That's it. That's it below us. Yeah.

Nice stone wall just helps you see
the route it takes

through the countryside. Yes.

Now we're going right down the road.

Got a stunning view of it. Yeah.

That is Scotland's
very first motorway.

It's only really cows that are
travelling on it these days. Yeah.

This is one of the best sections,
you can really see very clearly...

Look at that. ..of how that road
must have looked.

The view from above reveals
the sheer scale of the road

and the ambitions of those
early Roman builders.

We can also see how the road
has changed over the centuries.

That's it, now it becomes
a modern road.

Yeah. That's the transition.

It's amazing to think
the number of armies

who've marched
up and down this road.

Wow.

On the ground, you can see up close
the Roman design

that allowed Dere Street
to survive through time.

Here, I'm meeting historian
Richard Oram to find out more

about how this ancient road
helped trade and industry.

So the Romans left just a couple
of centuries after they arrived.

What happened to the road
after that?

Well, the road basically stays here

and it becomes, from the point of
the Roman departure,

it starts to become this major
boundary feature in the landscape.

Mostly we hear about this being
a military road, an invader's road.

But was there more travelling
up and down it than just soldiers?

Well, the presence of the road
allows people to begin to push back

into the country
on either side of it.

Begin to open it up for agriculture,
open up to exploitation,

and so the roadway
is something that is physically

going to lead to the transformation
of the landscape.

So could you say that this was
a road that was ahead of its time?

For this area, yes.

It's breaking into a territory that
had seen nothing of its kind before

and it wasn't going to see anything
of its kind again

for a few centuries.

Dere Street was a vital route,
but for hundreds of years

it was virtually
the only major road in Scotland.

The time of the roads would come,
but for almost all of our history,

industry relied on access to two
things - resources and the sea.

If you had both of them together,

then you could start a business
pretty much anywhere.

Like here, in the northwest
highlands in Wester Ross.

The land around Loch Maree

is picture postcard
Highland wilderness...

..but I'm taking a boat
across the loch

to what was, believe it or not,
a massive industrial centre.

And I'm looking for
traces of that industry

hidden away within Letterewe Forest.

It should be said that,
for a forest,

there's rather less in the way of
trees than you might imagine.

Once these hillsides were swathed
in oak, pine, holly, birch and elm.

The bare slopes today hint at a very
different story of this landscape,

because it was here that
Scotland's iron industry

first sparked into life.

In a time before coal,
trees fed the fires of industry.

As to where those fires were placed,

the name of this small burn
is a bit of a clue.

In Gaelic, it's called

Abhainn An Fhuirneis -
The River Of The Furnace.

And here are the faint remains
of what would become

one of the country's
biggest industries.

Four centuries ago,

this was the site of
Scotland's first-ever blast furnace.

Using the wood from
the surrounding forests

to make ferocious heat
to create iron.

Today, all that remain
are slabs of sandstone

and this heap of slag - a waste
product from the smelting process.

The rest is all gone.

But in the 1600s,

this area was the beating heart
of iron production in Scotland.

A whole landscape put to work.

Around Loch Maree, 300 acres
of forest a year were felled

and burned to make charcoal
for the furnaces.

Some of the iron ore
came from local deposits.

And easy access to the sea allowed
boats to bring in additional ore

and take away processed metal.

Just north of the loch, you can find
the remains of another blast furnace

used to smelt the iron.
This one better preserved.

The perfect place to meet
Dr Karen Buchanan

who studied the industries
of this remote area.

This site is called
A 'Cheardach Dhearg -

The Red Smiddy.

Behind us you can see the remains
of the stack of the blast furnace.

And who was buying the iron?
Where was it going to?

We think the iron was going to
the Netherlands.

In the literature, we're told
that they were making great guns.

In other words,
cannon on these sites.

So an early example of
the arms trade?

Exactly. In the most unlikely of
places.

Who'd have thought that Loch Maree

was the birthplace of
Scotland's heavy industry -

that cannon
and thousands of tonnes of iron

came from this tranquil spot?

It's quite remarkable that we have
these sites of such importance

in what is now perceived to be

such a remote
and under-industrialised area.

It's not what people expect
from industry, is it?

No, indeed.

What happened here at Loch Maree
couldn't last.

The forests were decimated

and deposits of
local iron ore dwindled.

The business used up this landscape
and then abandoned it.

But from these unlikely beginnings
grew a massive industry

at the heart of
Scotland's Industrial Revolution.

The Central Belt of Scotland.

This is where we traditionally think
heavy industry was born.

No wonder, because in 1759
an ironworks was built

close to Falkirk that was to last
for over 200 years.

The Carron Ironworks
became one of the largest

and most important in the world.

In this 1928 photograph,

you can see its chimneys
belching smoke.

But today just modern warehouses
remain, and a single large wall.

This is the southern wall
of the Carron Ironworks.

This place changed everything.

This was the Industrial Revolution.

You get a sense of the impact of
Carron in this painting from 1824.

The smoke from the smelting

pouring out
over the quiet fields of Falkirk...

..Scotland's countryside
colliding with heavy industry.

The Carron Ironworks led the way
for the vast industrial sites

that sprang up
all over the Central Belt.

Coal mines, quarries, factories
and shipyards...

..with thousands of workers flocking
to feed this great industrial beast.

Carron's site near Falkirk

was the perfect place to harness the
natural resources needed for iron.

Ore came from Bo'ness,

and newly discovered coal
from the Shieldhill mine.

Canals and railways made it easier
to transport materials.

Water for the works
came from the River Carron,

diverted into huge reservoirs which
today have been reclaimed by nature.

Local lad David Mitchell
is a colleague

from Historic Environment Scotland
and an expert on Carron's history.

You've got a real passion for
iron work,

do you think that came from growing
up so close to a site like this?

I've spent 25 years
researching the firms

and Scotland was the largest
exporter of

architectural iron products
in the world for about 80 years.

And it's something that's
not widely known.

So we have railway stations
in Brazil,

and Maharaja's palaces in India
that were all made in Scotland.

And latterly they also produced
domestic castings,

architectural work like the front
facade of Harvey Nicks in London,

down to cast iron pots and pans.

And there are a number of

famous names associated
with this site, aren't there?

Yes. James Watt.
Probably the earliest

and probably the most important who
was putting together a steam engine

at Kinneil House,
not so far from here.

And we have one of his first
cylinders cast by Carron Company,

actually built into the front facade
of what's left of the foundry.

But to begin with,

the factory's most famous product
was also its most deadly.

Cannon.

Like this one still manning
the parapet of Fort George

just northeast of Inverness.

Every cannon was marked by its maker
with the date of its production

and you can still see it here.

Carron, 1800.

Trafalgar.

Waterloo.

The American War of Independence.

The Crimean War.

For some 200 years, no major battle
happened in the world

without row after row
of Falkirk iron.

After Carron,
there was no going back.

Scotland was changed for good.

Every square inch of land was
weighed and measured for its worth.

Everywhere was fair game

in the onward march
of Scottish industry.

The Carron Ironworks relied
heavily on coal found locally...

..as did dozens of
other Scottish industries,

some all but forgotten today.

This is the Fife coast,
best known today for pretty harbours

and picturesque golf courses,
and fish suppers.

But if you'd come here 200 years ago
you would have been

standing at the heart of
a massive industrial operation,

producing something that changed how
we traded, lived, even how we ate.

I'll give you a clue.

My fish supper
wouldn't be the same without it.

Salt.

Just next to the village of St
Monans are nine very curious shapes.

They're all that remain of
an industrial plant

converting sea water into salt.

But to understand how it all worked,

you really need to look down
on the whole site from the air.

In a time before freezers,
salt was highly valuable

because it could preserve meat
and fish.

And sites for salt production

were scattered all around
the coast of Scotland.

But one of the largest
and most impressive from the air

is here at St Monans.

Joining me is Jo Hambly,

who studied the lost industry
of the salt masters -

the one-time producers of what was
known as Scotland's white gold.

How did they make salt?

It's a very simple process.

Over here is a sea full of salt
water, so that's their raw material.

And over here is coal.

And salt making was always
associated with a colliery.

So, here for example, it's called
the Newark Coal And Salt Work.

So the two go hand-in-hand.

So, for it's time,
was this quite sophisticated?

It was really sophisticated
and it was the...

It produced the most salt
in Scotland.

A mountainous 430 tonnes a year.

An aerial view shows how salt water

could be drawn along
this man-made channel

cut into the rocky coast,
still visible today.

This wind engine pumped the water up
and into the nine Pan Houses.

So, Joe, we're standing in
the ruins of the Pan House.

What would be happening here?

Well, we're actually standing
in the coal chute.

So if we were here
when this building was operational,

there'd be a little mini railway
here with wagons on it,

and those wagons would be
full of coal.

This coal was used to fuel fires set
up under a large metal pan.

The pan was filled with sea water,

and the heat would evaporate
off the liquid

leaving the precious salt behind.

And where we're standing now

is where they would have
worked the pan.

So the pan would have been
in this hole here...

..and, then, it's like magic.

Suddenly the salt starts
crystallising out of the water

when it gets to
a certain concentration...

..and, then, imagine
a big, like, garden rake...

..and they would just
pull it to the side...

..and then pile up the salt
on one side of the pan.

But there would still be liquid...

As it crystallised.
..as it crystallised,

but there would still be liquid
in the other part of the pan.

Salt production in Scotland lasted
till as recently as the 1950s.

But salt was just one cog
of the Industrial Revolution,

so much of it relying on coal.

Coal also revolutionised
how we travelled,

with the development of
steam trains.

Railways became the hallmark
of a new industrial Scotland,

moving people and resources
to every corner of the country.

A network once far more extensive
than it is today.

This is the fate of
many old railway lines.

The hurtling rush of iron and steam

replaced by simple pedal power.

This track was built

by the old Callander And Oban
Railway 150 years ago.

To climb up the glen,
the incline was 1/60 for six miles.

Tough going for a train hauling
tonnes of freight and carriages.

Easy going on a bike, though.

The line started in the Central Belt

and the plan was to build it all
the way to the fishing port of Oban,

connecting the west coast
to the centres of commerce.

By the autumn of 1866,
the line had reached Glen Ogle

where the track clings to
the contours of the hill.

Here at the halfway point,
the land falls away.

The track builders
needed another solution.

A stunningly bold and beautiful
piece of engineering.

This - the Glen Ogle Viaduct.

Built to smooth out a tight bend

that would have been impossible
for a train to get round.

And joining me on a walk
across its splendid 12 arches

is railway historian Tim Dunn.

So, Tim, why did they build
a line here?

In the middle years
of the 19th century, of course,

those railway magnates wanted to
get access to the coast,

because on the coast you had the
fish. They want to bring those fish

back into town and down to London.
That was a lucrative market.

But also the other direction
as well.

They were there to take people,
the tourists, up to the coast

for those great coastal steamers.

This was a line that was built
to take people out

and bring goods back down.

Construction in this kind of
landscape requires you to innovate,

doesn't it? Oh, massively.

I mean, this is a line that clings
all the way along this valley side,

all the way from here and up-up-up
up the glen over the top.

And, of course, this is
a pretty severe gradient.

They had to take out huge amounts of
stuff from the valley side as well,

and build viaducts like this,
to go round very tight curves,

and over very, very steep gorges.

And how successful was the line?

Well, for tourists
it was very successful.

But, then, unfortunately
this particular line got overtaken

by a competing line
that was much more direct

from Tyndrum down to Glasgow.

And suddenly the passengers
just dropped off.

Trains kept crossing
the Glen Ogle viaduct

until the line closed in 1965.

Today, it stands as proof

the industry isn't always
a blot on the landscape...

..and as a testimony to those

who delighted in
the challenge of building it.

If you've ever wondered why Scotland
has such a remarkable reputation

for producing engineers,
then here's your answer.

Faced with a landscape like this,

you had to innovate,
you had to be good.

Photos show how elegant
railway viaducts were built

all across Scotland.

Not forgetting that pinnacle
of Victorian railway engineering,

with the original and unrivalled
Forth Bridge.

The best way
to get a sense of how industry

has shaped our landscape
is in one of these.

A Twin Squirrel helicopter,

with a half-a-million pound camera
on its nose.

From Cumbernauld Airport,
pilot David Blaine is taking me

on a whistle-stop tour of
Scotland's industrial centre.

Our first location,
just south of Harthill,

a landscape of old collieries
and what some call spoil heaps.

In Scotland, we call them "bings".

It comes from the old Norse word
for heap.

Harthill Bing grew out of
the coal mining industry.

This was a man-made mountain.

Tonnes of waste rock
had to be extracted

from the ground to get to
the good stuff - the coal.

And it had to be dumped somewhere.

But not all Scotland's bings
are the result of coal mining.

Next up, we're flying
towards West Lothian.

We're just above
the town of Addiewell.

And in front of us is
the remarkable Five Sisters Bing.

It's the result of mining for shale,

the rock that gave Scotland
its first oil boom

in the mid 19th century.

The shale business produced
four times as much waste

as it did oil.

And that waste was simply
dumped at the back door

onto any one of the five bings,

depending on which way
the wind was blowing.

From The Five Sisters we're heading
north, close to Edinburgh Airport

and another even larger legacy
of the shale industry.

Just ahead of us is Scotland's
largest bing. Greendykes.

It's our own table mountain,
so large you can see it from space.

In its day, Greendykes stood
in a science fiction world

of heavy industry.

I was obsessed with this place
as a boy.

I thought it was like
the surface of Mars.

I always wanted to climb it.

I never thought that
the first time I'd get to the top

would be by helicopter.

I'm touching down
to meet up with Dr Robin Chesters

from the Scottish Shale Oil Museum.

So, Robin, it looks like we're just
on top of a hill, doesn't it?

The vegetation is taking over again.

It's a very special sort of hill.

I think it's only been this green
for the last 20 or 30 years.

Before that it would be raw and red
and black and very, very dusty.

Over the course of the years,

it's turned this lovely orangey
colour because the iron inside it

has sort of oxidised
and gone nice and rusty.

What do you think
the local community must've thought

when they saw this hill start to get
bigger and bigger and bigger?

I suppose it's something
they sort of live with

and it just takes its time.

There's a wonderful sort of sequence
of building of these various mounds.

It's over a long period of time.

I wouldn't have liked to have lived
in Niddrie village behind us

because it gradually became enclosed

in a canyon between two shale bings.

And they say it was very difficult
to get your washing clean,

dust coming in one direction
or the other.

But these bings were obviously
tied to their livelihood.

This is why they were here.

People came to West Lothian
to work in the shale oil industry.

It created an awful lot of economic
benefit. It was a lifestyle.

It's something which people have
come to be very proud of.

And now these sites have become
national monuments.

Certainly this one and The Five
Sisters are scheduled monuments

which means they're here
in perpetuity,

that this is a wonderful and unique
monument to a very special industry.

What began as industrial waste
is slowly reverting back to nature.

It's a process that's not unique
to Scotland's bings.

I'm travelling on 20 miles
to the southwest, to Lanarkshire

and what was Scotland's most famous
industrial plant...

..Ravenscraig.

Today, it's Europe's largest
waste ground.

1,000 acres.

So large you could fit 700
football pitches inside it.

But in its heyday, this plant was
the largest steel-maker in Europe,

producing two million tonnes
of steel per year.

Through the '80s and early '90s,

images of the towers of Ravenscraig
dominated the news.

Politicians, strikes
and threats of closure.

Today, only the footprints
of those towers remain.

And David's going to
bring us into the base

of what was that famous blue tower.

The footprint of
the iconic blue gas holder

is a perfect place to put down.

It's an exhilarating
but poignant moment.

A perfect landing in
the very centre of the circle...

..arriving in a world
nothing like I'd expected.

In my lifetime,

this place had been
the crucible of Scottish industry.

Now it's just a vast, eerie,
desolate space.

Fragments of floors and walls
scattered around everywhere.

I've been trying to work out
where I am

using this aerial photograph
from 1989.

You can see the old cooling towers
and gas holder here.

I think I'm in this building.

It's hard to tell.

I'm meeting up with Jack Dodds.

He worked at Ravenscraig
for over two decades.

It's sad when you think
what was here...

..and everything that happened here.

The impact that Ravenscraig had
on industrial Scotland

at that time was massive.

And here we are, '92...
30-odd years later. You know?

And it's like a country park here.

I worked here for 22 years
as a contracting electrician.

So I worked in every area
in Ravenscraig.

I enjoyed it.

It was a filthy, dirty hole,

there was continual vats of
hot metal in close proximity,

sometimes passing over your head.

In those days, health and safety
were two words that...

..nobody had heard them here.

Only men were allowed to
work in the steel mills.

The women of Ravenscraig,
like Dorothy McCready,

worked in the offices.

I was a wee shy lassie
when I started.

I wouldnae say boo to a goose.

And when I went to Ravenscraig,

on the front door
as you go in in the admin block,

it was all rubberised tiles
and there was...Ravenscraig,

there was a raven bird
standing on a craig

and big glass doors, and I thought,

"Ooh. This is posh. This is
awful posh for the likes of me."

A wee lassie fae the flats,
you know?

And it was just kind of
overwhelming at first.

What would this have looked like
if we'd been here 30/40 years ago?

Noisy.

Men shouting. Steam.

Men coming and going.
Trucks. Lorries.

I can't say it was a heat
because I wasn't working in a heat.

But it was busy. It was dirty.

You know, you get the ore dust
flying about

and steam and smoke and...

It was...

..typical industry, you know?
It was a man's world.

720, Andy.

For much of its working life,

Ravenscraig made a profit
from steel production.

But in the 1980s,
industrial disputes, privatisation

and increased foreign competition
threatened its future.

The market had fallen out of
the steel industry.

China was sending steel here,
Mexico was sending steel here,

and it severely hindered
this place. It did.

Ravenscraig closed its doors
in 1992.

The iconic towers
were demolished four years later.

Dorothy couldn't bear to watch.

Where I live in Law,
it's quite high up

and I could have walked to
the top of the street

and looked down and seen them coming

but I couldn't do it.
I thought, "No."

That was it. That was
the death nail. I felt that was it.

Would it have been too sad,
almost, to watch it? Oh, aye.

It would have been too sad for me.

The headlines spoke of the end of
heavy industry in Scotland,

claiming that centuries of furious

and often ingenious activity
was over.

Salt, shale, coal, iron, steel -
they'd all come and gone.

What was to be the future
of Scotland's industry?

The answer would be found
at the extremes,

as new technologies explored
and exploited old landscapes.

Scotland's age of oil had begun.

Once again, it was resources
on the far edge of the country

that regenerated our industry

and made a living for
so many Scots, including my dad.

In the summer of 1977,
he arrived here in Shetland.

It was the oil boom and he'd come
to help build the colossal

Sullom Voe oil terminal.

My dad was one of many thousands
of Scots who got on planes

and ferries to come here.

It was a far cry from the tenements
and the heavy industry

of our great cities.

This was a remote, foreboding,
starkly beautiful landscape.

You've got to wonder
what many of them thought,

but I know what my dad thought.

One of the biggest construction jobs
in the world.

He couldn't wait to get started.

It was a young engineer's dream.

Aerial photographs taken in 1975

show what was to become
the oil terminal

as an empty stretch of peat,
coastline and heather.

But a few years later,

work was under way moving
ten million cubic metres of peat,

building 25 miles of road
and 150 miles of pipeline.

By 1981, the oil terminal
was completed,

the work of the thousands of people
who'd come here.

People like my dad.

During the construction,

he and my mum lived here,
in the village of Brae.

It's a very un-Shetland like estate,

purpose built in 1977, to house
people working on the terminal.

A year later, I was born.

I lived in Shetland
for the first six months of my life.

And I've come back to meet
the present occupiers

of my parents old house -
Aran and his daughter Mia.

You must be Aran? Yeah.
How are you doing? I'm James.

Mia, I've got a photograph of me
at this very space.

Let's come out and look at this.

So it's that door. Oh, yeah.
Just like that.

And there we are.

Me on my dad's shoulder.

My dad would just have been
29 there. A year younger than me.

A year younger than you? Wow.
You don't have the moustache.

I think the moustache helps with
the age, doesn't it?

It was the '70s after all.

Now, what I want to know is
do you still have this carpet?

ARAN LAUGHS

The carpet has long gone

but these houses and the community
they created survive.

Families like mine were lucky enough
to have lived in individual homes.

But men who came to Sullom Voe
on their own

enjoyed rather less salubrious
accommodation.

I'm driving just a few miles east
of the terminal

on what looks to be a rather odd

purposeless road
to absolutely nowhere.

It's all that remains of

the legendary Toft Camp,

built to house 2,400 of the workers

who'd come to construct Sullom Voe.

Local girl Margaret Roberts started
work at the camp as a teenager.

When I was 14, I was old enough
to take a weekend job

in one of the small camps,

and I started as a chambermaid
when I was 14 so...

So, actually, that was
the start of a 40-year career

in the oil industry.

What were conditions like?

They were pretty good for the guys,
I think, in a way.

They all had single occupancy
rooms which was, I think,

quite unusual and, I mean, you don't
get that offshore these days.

And... But, I mean,
it was the 1970s.

They were working seven days a week
through the winter.

You know, they were working
in adverse conditions,

so I guess it was quite a hard life,

and so they worked hard
and they played hard, in the main.

And there must have been
a lot to clean up?

Yeah, we had interesting times
cleaning up.

Sometimes you would go in
to make a bed

and find that the guy had
clearly gone straight to the pub

in his working clothes, come home,

gone straight to bed
in his working clothes

cos you'd sort of be
getting the shingle off the sheets.

He'd just gone straight back out.

But, yeah, I mean,
it was it was mopping

and sweeping and making beds.
That's what we did.

Now husband and wife, Sheila
and Dave Newcomb both got new jobs

at the oil terminal. For Dave,
it was well-paid but gruelling.

I started about 1976...

..right up to the end.

Started with site trucks
and reclaiming the land

and then moved over
to the concrete side.

We had a big mixing plant.

We were busy all the time.

The longest one I ever did
was about 36 hours nonstop

to get all the concrete in.
So it was hard work.

Had you ever experienced
anything like it?

No, never. You couldn't.
The scale of the construction.

I mean, you're looking at
thousands of men

and you just wonder
where all these people went.

It's just amazing that
when it came to break time

all these men
popped out of ditches and holes

and everyone went to the canteens.

We were all designated to
a certain canteen, so...

Ours was canteen seven,
I remember it well.

Most of the Toft camp has gone,
but traces remain of the old pub.

The sight of many a tranquil
evening in.

Dave's wife Sheila
worked as a barmaid.

I was told to
start my work on a quiet night

and I got behind the bar
and we each...

There was four of us.
We had four stances.

You stayed at your own stance.

And this guy came up to the bar,
first customer

and he wanted 26 pints of lager
and 24 pints of beer and I said,

"You've got to be kidding me?"

I said, "You must know that
I'm new", and he says "no".

That was the way it was.
That was how it was

because there was so many of them
waiting to get served

that they just bought
huge rounds of drinks.

What was it like, seeing
the oil industry arriving here?

I think they got it so right because
the terminal is hardly visible

when you drive past it
but it's such a huge terminal.

And I just think they got it right.

And people were afraid.

They were fearful of
what the future was going to be.

But I think once they saw
how it was panning out,

that, "Yeah, this is OK."
And let's face it,

where would Shetland be
if we didn't have the oil terminal?

I was born at the birth of
the oil boom in Scotland.

But the business of finding
black gold at the end of the rainbow

has passed its peak.

Now, they don't build
new terminals on Shetland.

It's a place where
old rigs come to die.

Just north of Lerwick
is a decommissioning site

for oil rigs and platforms.

For over a year

they've been stripping this
12,000 tonne steel giant

back into tiny pieces.

This rig, it's actually older than
me. For more than four decades,

it's been at work in some of the
harshest environments imaginable.

And even after more than a year
of being pulled apart,

it's still quite a sight.

North Sea oil
was to be Britain's cash cow,

delivering profits
to put all others to shame.

The industry was at its height
in the late 1990s.

But it can't last forever.

It's estimated that another 40 years
of production is possible

and one by one every obsolete
platform will have to be dealt with.

Recycling the rigs is about a
commitment to cleaning up the mess

the industry leaves behind
for the sake of the planet.

But one day these huge works
of engineering

that have become familiar sights
along our coastlines

or even far out to sea
will all be gone.

But in their place,
new giants have already arrived

to stock our landscapes.

The wind is one resource
that Scotland

is unlikely to ever run out of.

And wind turbines
have become a massive industry.

The Scottish Government
plans by 2020 to have 100%

of the electricity used in Scotland
produced by renewable sources.

But where you place turbines
can be controversial.

I know some people who get upset

if there's a single wind turbine
anywhere in their postcode.

I can't begin to imagine
how they'd feel if they came here.

This is the Whitelee Wind Farm,

at Eaglesham, south of Glasgow,

home to not one turbine, but 215.

Whitelee is the largest onshore
wind farm anywhere in Britain.

It produces enough electricity
to power 300,000 homes.

It's big.

And to get a sense of just how big,
this is the map of Whitelee.

And this is the city of Aberdeen -

a city with a population
of 200,000 people.

They say this is what
the future looks like.

All the same, it's really just
another vast stretch of land

co-opted in
the service of industry...

..not so different
from many of the past.

Industry moves so quickly. In 50
years, the wind will still be here.

Maybe the turbines will,
maybe they won't.

Time and again, new industries
have come to dominate

Scotland's landscapes
and have then all but vanished.

But what they've shared
is a reliance on the resources

found all around us -

the slate of Belnahua...

..the iron for Carron...

..the salt for St Monans.

The landscape still holds
these traces and memories.

And when we look down on our past,

we can see industry
at the heart of it all.

Across this whole series,

it's been exhilarating

flying over so much of Scotland.

It's been an adventure too,

descending Canna's towering cliffs

in search of forgotten remains...

..or riding the highest road
in Scotland on a mountain bike.

With the view from above
as your guide,

you can seek out remarkable sights

and understand our past
more clearly.

From huge forts
that once dominated hilltops...

..to a lost fleets of ships

that brought riches to
our biggest city.

Look down and you can

see it laid out before you,

an ever-changing landscape...

..with Scotland's fascinating story
written all over it.