Original subtitles

BILL NIGHY: Escape with us on a magical journey

through the Scottish Highlands.

We'll witness some of the world's most spectacular scenery...

I've seen people literally with their jaws dropping going...

..travel through landscapes steeped in heroic saga.

I feel very emotional when I come back.

There's so much history here.

..and valleys rich in ancient folklore...

..on a journey that reveals a living heritage...

..and lasting flavours.

We're all teetotallers here.

We'll meet the people who live and work along this special railway...

Have your tickets ready, please.

Money can't buy that.

..before we arrive at Scotland's legendary capital.

What a fabulous city.

This is no ordinary railway journey.

This is one of the most scenic railway journeys in the world.

Scotland.

Our journey begins in Inverness.

Once the seat of ancient kings,

today it's the cultural capital of the Scottish Highlands.

Its central station lies at the heart of a railway network

that spans the north of Scotland.

Local communities rely on this transport lifeline...

..powered by a fleet of reliable diesel engine workhorses...

..including the Class 170 Turbostar,

and hour train, a British Rail Class 43 HST...

..and veteran conductor David is keen the 9:44 to Edinburgh

leaves bang on time.

WHISTLE BLOWS

It's a route affectionately known as the Highland Main Line.

See you, take care.

Cheers.

There we go, train's off the platform, we can close the window.

The first leg of our 187 mile journey takes us around Culloden,

the site of the last pitched battle fought on British soil.

Then we enter the Cairngorms National Park,

stopping at Aviemore,

the gateway to some of Scotland's finest landscapes.

From here, the train climbs towards Britain's highest railway pass,

then onwards through glorious Fife to Burntisland...

..across the magnificent Forth Bridge

to our destination, Edinburgh.

Have your tickets ready, please.

Our conductor David is no stranger to the Inverness to Edinburgh.

There we are. Fantastic.

He's been working on Scotland's railways for almost three decades.

I've worked in ScotRail for 29 years.

I might get to like it sometime.

I do love my job.

Seven minutes after leaving Inverness...

..and our train crosses one of Scotland's most iconic landmarks...

..Culloden Viaduct.

1,800 feet long...

..29 arches wide...

..it's the longest stone railway bridge in Scotland.

Designed 130 years ago by Scottish engineer Murdoch Patterson,

the viaduct is still admired by his great-grand-niece Anne-Mary,

three generations on.

It's architecturally perfect.

Because of the way that it has been constructed,

it's very elegant.

The red sandstone blends in with the countryside

because it's local stone.

Despite becoming one of Scotland's most famous viaducts...

..its visionary creator, Murdoch Patterson,

was never to see a single passenger cross it.

By the time to find out it just nearly finished, he was very ill.

He was very anxious to see the finishing touches

were done correctly and his assistant organized for him

to cross the viaduct so that he could give his last orders.

Because it was his last work,

he thought of it as being his masterpiece.

And after 120 years,

it's still going over...

Oh, here's the train coming.

Have your tickets ready, please.

Thank you.

It reminds me more of Christmas. It reminds you of Christmas?

Yeah, it reminds me of Christmas.

It's really bumpy.

THEY GIGGLE

You get used to it. You get the sea legs.

Apparently I walk funny when I'm walking down the street.

You don't really need alcohol to get drunk on this job.

Just walk up and down the train a couple of times.

After crossing the viaduct,

our train completes a giant curve

around one of Scotland's epic landmarks...

..and site of the last pitched battle on British soil.

Culloden Battlefield.

These red flags marked the front line of a huge government army

sent here in 1746 to crush a rebellion against the British king.

The saga is known as the Jacobite Uprising.

1,500 Scottish Bravehearts perished here

in a bloody massacre that lasted little more than 60 minutes.

But according to battlefield historian Catriona McIntosh,

what is remembered here to this day

is its impact on the close knit families of the Highland clans.

Clan regiments, like any regiment,

they know each other, they've trained together.

But actually, what we're talking about in these cases is fathers,

sons and grandparents.

So, you know these people.

You have to stand and watch people you know being devastated.

The mound, that is actually where the graves are,

you are physically standing where these men and boys are buried.

And it kind of just hits you.

Even today, the clans, they still exist and they come on to the field

and they remember this key moment, this iconic moment in history.

Ian is a direct descendant of one of the warriors who fought and died

at Culloden and Scotland's youngest clan chief.

The MacGillivrays and the Clan were some of the first

to reach the line of battle.

they were first to reach the Redcoat line.

And Allister MacGillivray was mortally wounded

and he crawled back here with a drummer boy from the other side.

He dragged him back to help him, to this well,

in order to get water for their wounds

and they were helping each other out

and this is where they died.

What we do in tribute is, as a wee boy, I've come here

and I've drank from the well and we'd bless ourselves,

just in tribute and in commemoration to our chief and our clan.

And all those who died at Culloden.

BAGPIPES PLAY

I feel very emotional when I come back to Culloden,

just knowing that my family, my clan fought here.

There's so much history here.

The battlefield today is very much alive.

BAGPIPES PLAY

Stunning part of the world.

Love living where we live. Yeah.

You're very patriotic, Millie, aren't you?

I like the colour tartan.

As our sturdy workhorse

surges through Scotland's historic landscape...

..t will soon end to one of Scotland's

most breathtaking national parks...

..the Cairngorms.

We're 30 miles into one of the world's most scenic railway journeys

through the Scottish Highlands.

Our final destination is Edinburgh.

Every time I go with her, we come on the train. More relaxing.

Yeah. And I always...

Then granny doesn't have to do all the work and we get to snuggle up.

Our train now veers south to enter Cairngorms National Park,

then stops at one of Scotland's most enchanting stations, Aviemore,

to then begin the long climb upwards towards Dalwhinnie.

The views up here are stunning.

It doesn't matter what sort of weather you're in,

what time of year,

it's beautiful scenery.

You get the white, you get blue of the sky and it is just stunning.

I've seen people literally with their jaws dropping going...

You know, it's absolutely fantastic.

For the next two hours,

our train passes through the spectacular

Cairngorms National Park,

jewel in the crown of the Scottish Highlands.

Look at that, Jake.

Almost 2,000 square miles wide,

it's bigger than the whole of Luxembourg

and the largest in the British Isles.

It also contains some of the country's most cherished conservation areas,

rich in wildlife and blanketed in ancient woodland,

known as the Caledonian Forest.

No-one is more familiar with the Cairngorms

than local resident Seumas .

My people have been here for most of the last 600 years.

My surname is Grant, which is the local clan name.

Seumas spends much of his free time hiking in the mountains

close to his home.

He's a Gaelic language expert

and likes to sing in his native language as he walks.

Seumas follows an old cattle droving road,

where centuries ago livestock raids were common.

SEUMAS SINGS

Today it leads up to a hill walking refuge called Ryvoan Bothy,

a farmhouse abandoned at the end of the 19th century.

During that time, many of the local Highlanders

worked on Scotland's railways,

including three generations of Seumas' own family.

I would quite often go up the hills with my father.

You could actually hear the trains coming and going.

He would say, "Oh, yes, it's a 2:30 from Perth to Inverness"

or whatever and he knew exactly what time it would be.

But even stranger tales abound in the valleys

that surround the railway.

There's a thing which was very common in the Highlands in the olden days.

A thing called Second Sight, Darna Sealladh.

And people...

..certain people could see things before they actually happened.

Some local elders believed they had visions

predicting the coming of the railway itself.

They were seeing strings of lights going across the moor,

and then every now and then, they would disappear

and then they would reappear again.

When they built the railway,

they saw that the strings of light were them.

These were the carriages going across the moor.

True to Scottish tradition,

even Ryvoan Bothy itself has its own story.

A tale also connected to the Highland Line.

During the 1930s, a travelling passer-by left verses of a poem

pinned to the doorway.

"I shall leave tonight from Euston

"On the 7:30 train

"And from Perth in early morning

"I shall see the hills again.

"I shall see the sunrise gleam

"On the forehead of Ben Rinnes.

"And Strathspey awake from dream.

"And then in dusk of evening

"I shall find once more alone

"The dark water of the Green Loch

"And the pass beyond Ryvoan.

For tonight I leave from Euston

"and I leave the world behind;

"Who has the hills as a lover

"Will find them wondrous kind."

32 miles after leaving Inverness,

our train approaches the enchanting Aviemore Station.

Constructed almost entirely out of timber

during the late-19th century, this Grade A listed station

has changed little since Victorian times...

..when tourists came here to enjoy Aviemore's famous mountain views.

Absolutely fantastic.

I love it when it's like this.

It's good for Aviemore.

Hopefully it'll bring some skiers up,

might bring more people on to the train, you never know.

Excellent.

While on the platform,

there's always time to drop in to the Highland Line restaurant

inspired by the railways Victorian past.

But just out of sight of this station, hidden away,

the original Highland Line is coming to life.

This isn't a scene lost in time...

..but a community of passionate train enthusiasts

from the Strathspey Railway...

..who are restoring some of the country's most majestic steam locomotives.

Every year they run these trains across a ten mile stretch

of heritage railway from Aviemore to Broomhill.

One day they hope to extend the route all the way down

to Grandtown-on-Spey.

For now, the locomotives are undergoing their winter makeover.

Not so much a chore, but a labour of love

for Strathspey aficionados like Andrew.

There's a bit of the Thomas The Tank Engine effect.

Steam tractions are very easy to understand.

A transparent kind of technology.

You can see how it works.

Whereas with diesels or electric trains, there's just boxes

and nobody can really see how it works,

but you can see a steam engine.

You can see the pistons going back and forward

and the rods driving the wheels round

and it's an exciting sight and sound.

The grand old lady of the Strathspey Railway

is their oldest steam locomotive, Caledonian number 848.

No-one knows the train like engineer Doug,

who has been loyally looking after it for over 20 years.

This engine was one of a class of about 70 similar locomotives

that the Caledonian rail built at the end of the 19th century

and they would all be slightly different.

Some would be lazy, sulky,

known as not particularly good performers.

Sometimes they want to go too fast.

They're just like people.

A lot of people here call it the Cali

because that's the shorthand version of Caledonian Railway,

but I just call it the 828 or the Old Pest.

Fortunately for the Old Pest,

Dog hasn't lost his passion for steam trains.

They're demanding machines.

Cali alone requires almost a quarter of a tonne of coal

and almost 2,000 litres of water to move just ten mines.

There's romance about them when they are working.

The smell, the visual that they have,

smoke and steam belching everywhere.

They're amazing machines.

Soon the trains will be out of their winter hibernation

and back onto the ten miles of heritage railway line already completed...

TRAIN CHOOS

..the Old Pest among them.

Any tickets from Aviemore, please.

Back on our train, our journey skirts Insh Marshes...

..an eight square mile bird sanctuary

on the flood plains of the River Spey.

It's beautiful, stunning scenery.

It's breathtaking. You've got the mountains. It's snowing.

The lochs. It's beautiful.

It's even caught the attention of the wildlife on the train.

That dog's a cocker-spaniel.

As our route heads south, it ascends deeper...

..and higher into the Cairngorms...

..towards the hamlet of Dalwhinnie, altitude 1204 feet.

CONDUCTOR: Calling at Dalwhinnie.

With an average recorded temperature of 6.2 degrees Celsius.

Dalwhinnie is officially the coldest station in the British Isles...

Thank you. You're welcome.

Have a great time, folks. Cheers.

..but connoisseurs worldwide will know the name for another landmark

that lies just a few snowy steps from the platform's edge...

..where they make what is locally known as The Gentle Spirit...

..whisky.

Jane is one of the many artisans who work here..

and one of Scotland's growing band of accomplished female distillers.

It couldn't be more Highlands than here.

Look at it.

We are the coldest and highest distillery

and this is typical for this time of year here at Dalwhinnie.

Jane is also something of a local historian.

"Dalwhinnie" means "meeting place"

and so cattle drovers would bring cattle and sheep

and start taking them down the drove roads.

Oh, I think we have a train coming.

When the railway arrived, it did bring people into the Highlands

for tourism but the freight was what really the business end of it was

and cattle and sheep were transported to market down south,

It also meant that we could get ingredients in

and product out of the distillery.

One of Jane's many duties here

is to oversee the fermentation process.

This involves boiling up milled barley...

..then fermenting it in huge wooden vats.

The liquid is then distilled twice in copper stills

before being transferred to oak barrels for up to 36 years.

But according to Jane, the whisky's distinctive flavour

doesn't just come from barley and wood alone...

..it comes from one extra ingredient only found here.

One of the key things about Dalwhinnie here is our water supply

and our water comes from a loch that's about three miles,

as the crow flies, behind the distillery

and that's called Lochan na Doire-uaine,

which means the "small loch of the green thicket".

As it runs down, it runs down a burn

and the burn is lovely and clear and cold

and the water arrives here freezing cold

and that allows us to maintain all the flavours that we want

from Dalwhinnie whisky.

There's lots of things that I really love about whisky.

I love the colour of it, I love and seeing it in the glass,

but overall, it's the flavour of it

and the most special thing of all is that it's home.

No, we're all teetotallers here.

It's going to be a bumpy ride.

Soon our train will climb to the highest point

of the railway network in the British Isles

and some of Scotland's most unforgettable views.

We're on Scotland's glorious Highland Railway,

an historic 187 mile voyage to Edinburgh

across breathtaking mountain landscapes.

We're coming up to one of the finest views on the line.

Just have a look. It's absolutely fantastic.

66 miles after leaving Inverness,

our train ascends to 1484 feet at Drumochter Pass

before continuing on towards the Scottish lowlands

and Blair Atholl.

After leaving Dalwhinnie,

more than 100 trains a week make the long ascent in all weather

towards the highest point on the British railway network,

Drumochter Pass.

This stunning alpine valley

is right in the heart of an ancient glaciated landscape.

During the last Ice Age, it sat under ice thousands of feet thick,

glaciers that sculpted the rocks to leave behind

the wide sweeping views that exist today.

Early humans used the pass to travel from the mountains

to the lowlands beyond.

Today, The Highland Line follows that same route.

Geoff lives right next to it at the top of the pass.

You don't get us anywhere else in the world.

What a beautiful day out. Money can't buy that.

This is the highest point on the rail network.

It sits at approximately 1584 feet high.

So, as you can see,

this section here is an incline in both directions.

During the 1860s, railwaymen attached extra locomotives to the regular trains

to help them up the steep gradient of the pass.

11 tonnes of coal they had to shovel just to get up this hill.

Now, apparently if they didn't get up enough speed

as they were coming up the hill,

the train would just grind to a halt.

For generations, railwaymen lived in cottages right next to the tracks

here at the pass.

Geoff has now converted them into a boutique bed-and-breakfast.

One of his first visitors was from a Drumochter railway family.

He was telling us this story

that he was brought up in these cottages.

So there was him and his family and his brother's family

all lived in one tiny little cottage.

So we brought him into the house and he got some photographs taken,

which is fantastic, there was a tear in his eye.

The stories don't end here.

Long before the days of the railwayman,

this remote Highland pass was steeped in local folklore.

If you look out of any window along the front of the house,

you'll see these two mountains.

The big one in the front,

it's name is the Boar of Badenoch.

Badenoch means flooded lands

and he protects this side of the valley.

The one behind us is the Sow of Atholl

and she protects the other side of the valley.

So the train is basically protected by two proper Scottish boar.

Living 30 feet from the railwayside,

right in the middle of Drumochter Pass is no ordinary existence

for Geoff and his wife, Fiona.

The trains pass within inches of their house.

Fiona is actually an archery instructor

and on occasion we've had guests out in the back garden playing archery

and , yeah, there was a train passing

and one of the guests shot the arrow

and I think the train driver got a bit of a fright.

So he blasted his horn. So we know not to do that again.

After passing Drumochter, the line loses altitude,

getting warmer as it descends into the great wooded valleys of Perthshire.

Here, our train passes some of Scotland's great aristocratic estates.

According to the train historian John Yellowlees,

the lairds who owned them were the real force

behind the birth of the Highland Railway.

At the start of the 19th century, the Highlands were in a mess.

The place had been ravaged by the legacy of conflict

when along came the railway era.

Landed interests, Dukes and Earls and others

wanted the Highlands to have improved connectivity.

Incredibly, in less than two years, the railway was complete.

So the original Highland Railway was born out of a sense of community

from landowners in the Highlands wishing to create an asset

for the benefit of all who lived there.

But there was one laird, The Duke of Atholl,

who at first wasn't so keen on the railways.

As local museum trustee Jim knows,

without the great Scottish aristocrats,

there was no hope for a Highland railway.

The Duke of Atholl owns all the land,

which is crucial for the railway,

about a 24 mile stretch and initial approaches in 1845 were refused.

The Duke didn't want any of these dirty iron horses

crossing his land.

For the likes of the Duke of Atholl,

19th century Scotland was gloriously lost in time and unspoilt.

It took some persuading to eventually allow

one of the dreaded "iron horses" through.

A second attempt in 1860 proved more successful.

There were sweeteners added.

The company said they would use stones taken from Tulloch Quarry,

which was owned by the Duke.

So they decorated the bridges and tunnel entrances

to resemble castles.

The Duke also got his very own station,

named after his family estate.

A scene hardly changed to this day.

It's a historic line. You know, there's a few stories.

This is Killiecrankie Gorge.

We'll be going through a tunnel just a moment,

but after the Battle of Killiecrankie...

Whey, there we are.

..there was one of the soldiers, he was fleeing and he came down

and he jumped across that point in the river just up there.

It's 17 feet.

He was running away and to make his getaway,

he had to jump across the river, which is quite a distance...

..just for one jump.

Certainly a lot of folklore and history about the line.

Within ten minutes of leaving Blair Atholl,

our train pulls in at our next stop, Pitlochry.

A charming rural town made popular by Victorian railway travel.

CONDUCTOR: Ladies and gentlemen, the service is approaching Pitlochry.

Today, the station has become a destination in its own right...

..with its story book looks.

Bobby McGraw, along with scores of volunteers,

runs a charity book shop

housed in the station's original main building.

When passengers first arrive and look at the window

it appears really, really small, but when they walk in the door,

they are absolutely astonished.

It is like stepping into the TARDIS because it's a small shop

which goes behind, beyond, above.

It goes on and on and on.

Among train travellers in the know, the station is almost legendary.

Trains pass Pitlochry from as far away as London.

It's amazing the number of people I meet who come off the train,

come into the book shop from all over the world.

I think part of the book shop's charm is you can sit

and have a cup of coffee and a shortbread biscuit

made by our volunteer and browse for as long as you like

and watch the trains whizzing past in our wonderful Victorian station.

I suppose it is a quirky little station, really.

I had one woman, she was writing a novel.

She's wrote a wee passage about the conductor on the train

in the novel, so somewhere I'm in a book.

100 miles into the journey,

the Highland Main Line enters the River Tay valley...

..the start of Scotland's central belt, known as the Lowlands.

The scenery is stunning.

It's ever changing and it always looks great.

It's certainly the gateway to a lot of beautiful places.

It's just magic. I never get tired of it.

Next, out train charges on towards Fife...

..where the Highland Railway changed the course of world history.

It's the final stretch of our four hour train journey

on Scotland's Highland Railway.

It passes through Fife...

..a magnificent peninsula

hemmed in between the River Tay and the North Sea.

The route takes us past the seaside town of Burntisland...

..across the Forth estuary to our final destination, Edinburgh.

For the first time, passengers get a glimpse of the coastline

as our sturdy Highland workhorse shoots past Burntisland.

150 years ago, the train line terminated here.

Edinburgh, Scotland's capital,

sits on the other side of the five mile wide Forth estuary,

known as the Firth of Forth.

Victorian engineers came up with a surprising invention

to get across it...

..as investigated by local historian Ian.

I'm holding the air and the Ordnance Survey County Series map

from about 1854.

And I'm standing on the exact spot of where the railway line ends

and it was here that a very clever Victorian engineer

called Thomas Bouch invented the flying bridge.

It's a wee bit like a drawbridge,

where the trains would be run down and the goods wagons

would be run down onto this bridge

and then it would be adjusted to the deck of the boat

and the goods wagons would be loaded on from there.

This was the world's first roll-on/roll-off ferry.

It was very, very clever.

But the Victorians were about to get even cleverer,

and in doing so, alter the course of world history.

During the 1880s, they began planning the construction

of a super structure so spectacular that it would dwarf all others...

..and become a landmark that would come to define Scotland itself...

..the Forth Railway Bridge.

Ian was born close to this steel colossus...

..he's now its senior manager.

The Forth bridge was definitely the pinnacle of Victorian engineering.

The biggest bridge ever constructed,

longest span ever constructed,

over a water course which is 150 feet deep at its deepest point,

so an absolute feat of engineering.

The bridge was the biggest engineering experiment of its day.

Until then, the world's great superstructures

like the Eiffel Tower were made of iron,

but the bridge's joint architect, John Fowler, chose steel instead.

Using 54,000 tonnes of this superior metal,

bolted together with 6,500 rivets,

he oversaw the construction of a bridge

that spanned a mile and a half.

This particular feature about the bridge is a very favourite of mine.

What this does is really shows the first cantilever in its full splendour,

going from quite narrow to very broad, very sturdy.

The bridge is as A shape, which makes it very, very strong.

After six years in the making,

the longest cantilever bridge ever built was opened in 1890.

It was dubbed the eighth greatest wonder of the world.

The bridge is as much a thrill to me to go today

as it was on day one when I first came here.

One question we've often thought about is what gender is the bridge?

There's no question, this is a lady.

This is a very proud lady.

Similar to a ship, that majesty on the river, on the water.

Definitely a she.

Almost 200 trains cross the Forth Bridge each day...

..over 70,000 a year...

..and that includes ours.

Finally...

..three and a half hours after leaving Inverness...

..our train arrives at our destination...

..Edinburgh Waverley.

For stationmaster Juliet,

this historic station is the perfect gateway to Edinburgh.

Just a few short steps away above the station,

Scotland's seat of power, its capital.

So here we are. This is my absolutely favourite cityscape.

Such a variety of architecture.

So many different buildings.

So many things to look at. So many things to see.

Absolute snippet of excellence.

This is Edinburgh to me.

Edinburgh's just such a beautiful city.

It's a very vibrant, the city. It's a live city.

It is the city of the world's biggest festival.

What a fabulous city.

Always walk around with your head up as much as possible.

You don't want to miss anything.

On our epic 187 mile journey from Inverness to Edinburgh...

..we have travelled across some of Scotland's finest landscapes...

..enjoyed its legendary flavours...

..crossed Britain's highest railway pass...

..and witnessed the joy of steam trains.

It's a spectacular world-class railway journey.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media